[GUI Plugin] Modify ePub

[JSWolf]

I like the smaller reorganized windows that can also have scroll bars. Thank you both.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

However, I do have the merge downloaded (surprisingly easy on the same platform) and should be able to post the unified update tomorrow. Or, depending on your perspective, later today. It's in the mix, is what I'm saying.

Apologies for the delay, but I took the opportunity to track down and address a couple of minor bugs. The complete changelog entry for this version reads:

Version 1.3.12 - 02 Oct 2014
Fixed minor bug in "stripkobo" option that missed some Kobo artifacts inside the HEAD element.
Fixed minor spacing bugs in "unpretty" option.
Enhancement to "stripkobo", "stripspans", and "unpretty" options: All three now remove </br> and </hr> tags and always make BR and HR self-closing elements. (This fixes invalid <br> and <hr> markup, if such is present.)
Moved "stripkobo", "stripspans", and "unpretty" into the "Known artifacts" category to balance the dialog box better.
Added some code to dialogs.py to make the dialog box scrollable on smaller screens.
Help file: Filled in how one can detect the need to smarten punctuation. (Was previously blank.)

I have deleted the two earlier 1.3.12 betas from those posts and attached the new one here; that way, infrequent visitors here won't pick up the wrong one.

In case anyone's curious about the need (or lack thereof) for the self-closing BR/HR enhancement, here's my reasoning:

Some software, such as LibreOffice Writer, treats those two elements as being standalone with no closing tag. That is, when saving a document as HTML, it will render a line break as <br> instead of the <br/> required by XHTML (and therefore EPUB). The fix I came up with is to always remove </br> and </hr> tags (to address the rare but valid <br></br> construction in the even rarer event that there is a LF between the open and close), then always force BR and HR to end with /> instead of >.

If you gather from the above that I may have wrangled with that issue recently, you just might be on to something...

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by AlanHK

In its "Help", under "Smarten punctuation" the "How to detect" column is blank; however that is detected by the Quality Check plugin option "Check smarten punctuation".

As noted immediately above, since I had to patch a couple of bugs anyway, I've fixed this oversight in the newest beta. (I didn't forget...)

[readx]

It looks great and works even better

[fernando2112]

Hi,

I am new to this forum and ebook readers world, just bought a Kobo Glo, and already have a few issues with css rules.

When converting to kepub, things like text-align center on <div> or <p> tags just don't work anymore, and a few others rules.

So I searched this forum and found this plugin, and some people talking about the kobo hacking style code that it adds to the kepub and mess with our css rules, and this plugin can remove it, so the kepub works more like the epub version.

I tried the plugin, but my book still fail to recognize simple rules like text-align center on <div> or <p>.

I must admit that I still don't understand all the options in the plugin, and don't know if I am doing something wrong, or if I didn't understand the functionality of it. As I said, I am new to all of this, still learning about all those tweaks.

I appreciate any advice you can give.
Thank you very much

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by fernando2112

When converting to kepub, things like text-align center on <div> or <p> tags just don't work anymore, and a few others rules.

So I searched this forum and found this plugin, and some people talking about the kobo hacking style code that it adds to the kepub and mess with our css rules, and this plugin can remove it, so the kepub works more like the epub version.

That sounds like you're starting with a regular EPUB, then using a plugin to make it a kepub, and that's where you get problems. In that situation, you should report the problem as a bug in that plugin's thread, as it sounds to me from your description as if that conversion is introducing problems.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by fernando2112

I tried the plugin, but my book still fail to recognize simple rules like text-align center on <div> or <p>.

Check that you have the justification button set to "Off" in the device's font menu, otherwise the kepub reader sets the text-alignment for <div> and <p> elements to left/justify in the device's built-in stylesheet, which overrides the book's stylesheet.

[kiwidude]

I have uploaded Rev. Bob's version to the first post - all thanks to him for making the changes.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

I have uploaded Rev. Bob's version to the first post - all thanks to him for making the changes.

Thank you both Kiwidude and Rev. Bob. This is a very useful plugin and the latest additions make it even better.

[fernando2112]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

That sounds like you're starting with a regular EPUB, then using a plugin to make it a kepub, and that's where you get problems. In that situation, you should report the problem as a bug in that plugin's thread, as it sounds to me from your description as if that conversion is introducing problems.

Sorry for taking long to answer.

Yes, I am using a plugin on Calibre to conver to kepub.
But the tip from GeoffR on the next quote below solved the problem partially. Don't know if it is kobo related, or the convert plugin, as you said.

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Check that you have the justification button set to "Off" in the device's font menu, otherwise the kepub reader sets the text-alignment for <div> and <p> elements to left/justify in the device's built-in stylesheet, which overrides the book's stylesheet.

Thanks for the advice, it solved my problem.

The only catch is that I can't change alignments for the whole text when I want, without messing up with specific parts of text that are aligned center.

If someone likes left and someone likes full justify, when they set the alignment, the parts which were centered, reset again.

But like Rev. Bob said, probably it's not related with Modify ePub plugin, maybe it's an issue with kobo rendering the css.

Thanks both of you for the answers

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by fernando2112

The only catch is that I can't change alignments for the whole text when I want, without messing up with specific parts of text that are aligned center.

If someone likes left and someone likes full justify, when they set the alignment, the parts which were centered, reset again.

Edit: I thought I knew how to get around this, but after testing it doesn't work with kepubs. One more to add to my ever-growing list of reasons to read epub instead of kepub I guess.

[fernando2112]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Edit: I thought I knew how to get around this, but after testing it doesn't work with kepubs. One more to add to my ever-growing list of reasons to read epub instead of kepub I guess.

Yeah, ePub works way better on Kobo than kepub. And I have the Kobo Glo for a week now, I am still testing and learning about all the issues.

With ePubs, a lot of the formatting that works on iPad's iBooks (I used to have one) and works on Sigil book view, when converted to kepub, does not work anymore. It is making me have a hard time, because I have to modify a lot of things that usually works fine with other readers.

The only thing that is making me use kepub right now, is because of title bar and bottom page numbers, which seems not to work with ePub the way I wanted.

[Rev. Bob]

Consider this a public service non-announcement...

I'm still making some touch-ups and tweaks to the "unpretty" function, but I'm deliberately dragging my feet on releasing those changes. Part of it is that I want to run some more tests, but I also don't consider this enough of an improvement to justify an update.

Now, if a bug needs fixed or some other enhancement comes along and an update is justified on those grounds, naturally I'm prepared to bundle these changes in at the same time...but otherwise, my stance is that 1.3.12 works fine and I don't want to bug kiwidude (or the rest of the community) over such a minor change.

One such change is something that's been brought up to me: one user has reported that some of the older code in the plugin doesn't seem to do anything, and he speculates that it may be legacy code that could be safely stripped out. I can't properly assess that, as I haven't studied all the dependencies...but if it's true and kiwi (or one of the other devs here) wants to look into that, I would ask that they give me a heads-up before releasing an update, so the unpretty update can tag along.

[Kaetrin]

@Rev. Bob I've installed the [deleted] and modify ePub plugins. There are a lot of settings in the modify ePub plugin - which do you recommend to fix kepubs as a general rule?

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by Kaetrin

@Rev. Bob I've installed the [deleted] and modify ePub plugins. There are a lot of settings in the modify ePub plugin - which do you recommend to fix kepubs as a general rule?

When I'm cleaning my own, I apply stripkobo and stripspans, as well as unpretty and a few other bits...but stripkobo alone is the "surgical" option. That's exactly what that routine exists to do; anything else is gravy.