BookShelves — Native EPUB Reader for macOS and iOS (looking for feedback)

[QuietShelfLife]

Good news — I've already pushed a fix for this. The next build removes the forced line-height and paragraph margin overrides entirely. Publisher CSS now controls typography by default, and the reader only overrides structural properties needed for pagination.

Got your rendering report, thanks for submitting it — the chapter HTML and screenshot are exactly what I need to verify the fix. Appreciate you testing on iOS.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by QuietShelfLife

Good news — I've already pushed a fix for this. The next build removes the forced line-height and paragraph margin overrides entirely. Publisher CSS now controls typography by default, and the reader only overrides structural properties needed for pagination.

Got your rendering report, thanks for submitting it — the chapter HTML and screenshot are exactly what I need to verify the fix. Appreciate you testing on iOS.

Eventually, I can test it on my iPad Pro 13" and see how it goes. I'll wait for the new version.

[QuietShelfLife]

Sounds good. The CSS fix will be in 1.0.9 at the earliest — I want to test it thoroughly before pushing it to the App Store. I'll post here when it's out.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by QuietShelfLife

Sounds good. The CSS fix will be in 1.0.9 at the earliest — I want to test it thoroughly before pushing it to the App Store. I'll post here when it's out.

For the next version, can you add multi-column support? My iPhone is an iPhone 15 Pro Max and the lines are long in landscape and it's would be even worse on my iPad.

[QuietShelfLife]

Multi-column is on the list. Right now it's available for PDF and comics but not yet for EPUB. It makes a big difference on wider screens — especially iPad landscape. I'll bump the priority on that one.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by QuietShelfLife

Multi-column is on the list. Right now it's available for PDF and comics but not yet for EPUB. It makes a big difference on wider screens — especially iPad landscape. I'll bump the priority on that one.

I just wish that ePub readers would stop adding PDF support. It's just bloat.

[QuietShelfLife]

Version 1.0.9 just went live on the App Store. The CSS fix is in — publisher stylesheets now control line-height, paragraph spacing, and margins by default. The reader only overrides structural properties needed for pagination.

Would love to hear how it renders on your iPad Pro 13" now.

[QuietShelfLife]

That's fair. EPUB is where the focus is — the CSS fix in 1.0.9 and everything on the roadmap (custom fonts, multi-column, scroll mode) are all EPUB rendering improvements. PDF just happens to be there for the people who need it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by QuietShelfLife

Version 1.0.9 just went live on the App Store. The CSS fix is in — publisher stylesheets now control line-height, paragraph spacing, and margins by default. The reader only overrides structural properties needed for pagination.

Would love to hear how it renders on your iPad Pro 13" now.

I'm now running 1.0.10 and I do not see any of these fixes. Are they really there? If so, how do I access them? Thanks.

P.S. When I access Themes and settings, all I get is themes and font size.

[QuietShelfLife]

The CSS fix is automatic — there's no setting to toggle. In 1.0.9, the reader stopped forcing its own line-height and paragraph spacing over the book's CSS. So if your book specifies line-height: 1.2 or margin-bottom: 0.5em, those values now come through instead of being overridden.

If the book you tested still looks wrong, could you submit another rendering report from inside the reader? That'll send me the chapter HTML so I can see exactly what CSS the book is using. It's possible the book itself doesn't specify much and the reader defaults are what you're seeing.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by QuietShelfLife

The CSS fix is automatic — there's no setting to toggle. In 1.0.9, the reader stopped forcing its own line-height and paragraph spacing over the book's CSS. So if your book specifies line-height: 1.2 or margin-bottom: 0.5em, those values now come through instead of being overridden.

If the book you tested still looks wrong, could you submit another rendering report from inside the reader? That'll send me the chapter HTML so I can see exactly what CSS the book is using. It's possible the book itself doesn't specify much and the reader defaults are what you're seeing.

I've sent a report. The CSS has no line height specified. The problem is the app is not doing it correct. With no line height, it should not be doing anything with a line height. The line height in the paragraphs is too large and the line height between paragraphs is ridiculous. Also, the default L/R margins are too large.

And also very impotent is that the windows and orphans are not being respected. I have them set to 1 and the app is overriding them in the wrong way. if a full paragraph doesn't fit at the end of the screen, it moves that paragraph to the next screen. There is so much white space that it's unreadable. One of the screen shots in the app store shows how bad this is.

Also, we need settings to set the line height, the L/R margins, and the font. And we need to be allowed to use a custom font . Also, fonts need to be able to have the weight adjusted. The margin setting and the line-height also need to be able to be turned off.

[QuietShelfLife]

Got the rendering report, thanks - that's exactly what I need to dig into this properly.

You're right on all counts. Here's what's happening under the hood:

Widows/orphans: The app defaults to widows: 2, orphans: 2 on all paragraphs. For short paragraphs (2-3 lines), that effectively means they can't split across pages at all - the engine pushes the whole paragraph to the next page rather than leaving a single line behind. That's where the white space is coming from. Dropping to 1/1 would fix the worst of it, and making it a user setting is the right move.

Line height: Default is 1.6 when the book doesn't specify one. Too generous for a lot of books - especially ones with already-loose paragraph spacing. No user control for this yet, which is the real problem.

Margins: Left/right are fixed at 40px on macOS. Should be adjustable.

All of this points to the same gap: the reader needs a proper typography settings panel - line height, margins, widows/orphans, font selection beyond the theme presets, custom font loading. I've been tracking most of these as feature requests already, but your report makes it clear they need to move up the priority list.

I'll start with widows/orphans (quickest win for readability) and line height. Will post here when there's a build to test.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by QuietShelfLife

Got the rendering report, thanks - that's exactly what I need to dig into this properly.

You're right on all counts. Here's what's happening under the hood:

Widows/orphans: The app defaults to widows: 2, orphans: 2 on all paragraphs. For short paragraphs (2-3 lines), that effectively means they can't split across pages at all - the engine pushes the whole paragraph to the next page rather than leaving a single line behind. That's where the white space is coming from. Dropping to 1/1 would fix the worst of it, and making it a user setting is the right move.

The CSS is specifying widows and orphans of 1. So that should not be an issue. This means that the app is not respecting the CSS properly,

Line height: Default is 1.6 when the book doesn't specify one. Too generous for a lot of books - especially ones with already-loose paragraph spacing. No user control for this yet, which is the real problem.

When no line height is specified, you just go with whatever the font gives you You do not specify any line height amount.

Margins: Left/right are fixed at 40px on macOS. Should be adjustable.

Yes, they should be adjustable but they are not. Please add this in.

All of this points to the same gap: the reader needs a proper typography settings panel - line height, margins, widows/orphans, font selection beyond the theme presets, custom font loading. I've been tracking most of these as feature requests already, but your report makes it clear they need to move up the priority list.

I agree that these things need to be top priority in order to be readable. As it is, it's not readable at all.

I'll start with widows/orphans (quickest win for readability) and line height. Will post here when there's a build to test.

Thanks. Please don't specify any line height when there isn't one. Let the font do the work. Then when you have a line height adjustment make it so it goes lower then 1 and higher then one but don't make the increments too large.

[QuietShelfLife]

You're right about the widows/orphans — if your CSS specifies 1, the app should respect that. I found where our stylesheet overrides it. Same with line height — when the book doesn't specify one, I shouldn't be injecting 1.6. Working on a build now that fixes both of those and adds margin adjustment. Will post here when it's ready to test.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by QuietShelfLife

You're right about the widows/orphans — if your CSS specifies 1, the app should respect that. I found where our stylesheet overrides it. Same with line height — when the book doesn't specify one, I shouldn't be injecting 1.6. Working on a build now that fixes both of those and adds margin adjustment. Will post here when it's ready to test.

You should not be injecting any line height when there isn't one in CSS. You should let the font do the work unless the forthcoming line height setting specifies the line height.

I look forward to the next release.