Question for those who edit .CSS files

[Mr_H_Poirot]

I see that some on here edit .CSS files to make changes to formatting of books. I have fewer books than most of you but I was wondering why there is a need to format given that things like font and line spacing and justification can usually be set on the e-reader itself

Is it mainly to take out acknowledgement pages etc and shorten the book?

[Sirtel]

It's to take out excerpts, ads and other unnecessary crap, but also to make all books look uniform and eliminate the need to fiddle with the ereader settings every time I open a new book.

[Mr_H_Poirot]

Thanks Sirtel

I might look into how to edit (assume I can do in calibre) to remove the excerpts etc.

On making them look uniform, I find my kobo unifies all my books formatting as far as I can tell in terms of font etc. But I may be missing something! I'll have a look on youtube for some examples!

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Mr_H_Poirot

On making them look uniform, I find my kobo unifies all my books formatting as far as I can tell in terms of font etc.

Not always. It depends on the book - sometimes publishers do really stupid things and insert rules in the css that shouldn't be there. Kepubs ignore many css rules, yes, but epubs don't, and there's also the fact that I might read on some other device in the future, not on a Kobo. I'd still want my books to look uniform.

Moreover, there are things that Kobo cannot make look nice even with kepubs - huge text indents, huge white space around chapter headings, spaces between paragraphs etc. The only way to fix those is to edit them manually.

[Mr_H_Poirot]

Ah, I hadn't thought that kobo would treat it differently. Interesting

[Mr_H_Poirot]

The one thing I have found is that when I split some omnibus books they don't always recognise the chapter headings. I was thinking there may be a way for me to edit that in calibre (although I have also seen sigil a good tool).

I shall have a play around today

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Mr_H_Poirot

The one thing I have found is that when I split some omnibus books they don't always recognise the chapter headings. I was thinking there may be a way for me to edit that in calibre (although I have also seen sigil a good tool).

I shall have a play around today

Almost certainly. Personally I don't split omnibuses, though, I'm more likely to merge books into one.

[Mr_H_Poirot]

Brilliant. It wasn't chapters it didn't recognise but no 'table of contents' existed when I split them. I have now been able to create one with Sigil on the split book

Thanks!

[JSWolf]

I do edit my eBooks.

I remove all HTML I don't need/want such a previews, adverts, HTML Toc, and other junk.
I also remove unused CSS.

I add my own CSS. I remove the unnecessary classes such as <p class="indent">. I edit the CSS to be clean and do it how I want. I make sure all of the margins are consistent. I make sure all of the font sizes are consistent.

When I am done, I've followed the rule of making ePub eBooks. That rule is Keep it simple.

[rjwse@aol.com]

Originally Posted by Mr_H_Poirot

I see that some on here edit .CSS files to make changes to formatting of books. I have fewer books than most of you but I was wondering why there is a need to format given that things like font and line spacing and justification can usually be set on the e-reader itself

Is it mainly to take out acknowledgement pages etc and shorten the book?

I do not use word processor or text editor at all and now only use the editor portion of calibre to do original writing. Nobody does this because it foregoes all convenience of modern word processors. However, there is a months-long (or even years-long) learning curve in becoming proficient with a full-fledged word processor. I migrated over to learning CSS to control all attributes of epub output so that no matter what name brand gizmo you read on, even complex text, images, lists, charts, tables, captions, headings, etc. will come out right. I do not recommend doing this at all; it is just for me and the way I like doing stuff. ebook readers vary a lot. None of them at all allow full range of CSS. The closest thing to "full CSS" is the ebook reader in calibre. One nice inadvertent outcome of me doing this is that when done I stab "c" and the epub converts into PDF for upload and printing to Amazon. The PDF output is exact also, with complex text, images, lists, charts, tables, captions, headings also. Beyond that (of course) there are margins, printer's offset, footers, table of contents. This CSS stuff is a never-ending, constantly-evolving kludge. All over the place in it are once-prevalent but now-abandoned conventions, some of them overlapped into "deprecated." For the most part, unless you are curious and willing to tweak, it is not needed to dive deeply into CSS and you should stick with auto-conversion. Nevertheless, I am so very glad I did learn all this stuff.

[Mr_H_Poirot]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I do edit my eBooks.

I remove all HTML I don't need/want such a previews, adverts, HTML Toc, and other junk.
I also remove unused CSS.

I add my own CSS. I remove the unnecessary classes such as <p class="indent">. I edit the CSS to be clean and do it how I want. I make sure all of the margins are consistent. I make sure all of the font sizes are consistent.

When I am done, I've followed the rule of making ePub eBooks. That rule is Keep it simple.

That sounds like you have very neat files but it also sounds like a lot of work. I think because I only read on my kobo, the kobo itself deals with the font size and margin so I don't need to bother with any of that. You of course may well have other reasons to want that so it works for you

Being able to create new TOC in a split book today has been very handy so that's a good learning for the day

[Mr_H_Poirot]

Originally Posted by rjwse@aol.com

I do not use word processor or text editor at all and now only use the editor portion of calibre to do original writing. Nobody does this because it foregoes all convenience of modern word processors. However, there is a months-long (or even years-long) learning curve in becoming proficient with a full-fledged word processor. I migrated over to learning CSS to control all attributes of epub output so that no matter what name brand gizmo you read on, even complex text, images, lists, charts, tables, captions, headings, etc. will come out right. I do not recommend doing this at all; it is just for me and the way I like doing stuff. ebook readers vary a lot. None of them at all allow full range of CSS. The closest thing to "full CSS" is the ebook reader in calibre. One nice inadvertent outcome of me doing this is that when done I stab "c" and the epub converts into PDF for upload and printing to Amazon. The PDF output is exact also, with complex text, images, lists, charts, tables, captions, headings also. Beyond that (of course) there are margins, printer's offset, footers, table of contents. This CSS stuff is a never-ending, constantly-evolving kludge. All over the place in it are once-prevalent but now-abandoned conventions, some of them overlapped into "deprecated." For the most part, unless you are curious and willing to tweak, it is not needed to dive deeply into CSS and you should stick with auto-conversion. Nevertheless, I am so very glad I did learn all this stuff.

Wowsers! I would have thought writing in Word or Libre Writer using their styles would make it easy to convert to an epub with most of the css automated? But good for you.

Yes, I only intend to use css in the very rare case there is an issue such as the TOC one I mention above

[Loosheesh]

Whenever I see any posts about editing CSS etc, I get a strong sense of to each his own. I've been reading ebooks since 2009 and only once felt compelled enough to edit the formatting, which was just plain nasty. When I'm reading, I rarely get bothered by anything except text alignment—it must be justified or else I feel like I'm getting cross-eyed

I buy lots of Delphi Classics collections and I sometimes have to tweak the TOC when I split a book out of a collection. And that's all I do. I tend to get obsessive about things, so if I had to get into editing CSS et al, I'd have little time to actually read. I'm happy that this is one place my unpleasant perfectionism does not rear its ugly head

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Mr_H_Poirot

That sounds like you have very neat files but it also sounds like a lot of work. I think because I only read on my kobo, the kobo itself deals with the font size and margin so I don't need to bother with any of that. You of course may well have other reasons to want that so it works for you

Being able to create new TOC in a split book today has been very handy so that's a good learning for the day

It sounds like more work then it actually is depending on the source. When you remove the excess p classes and change the the space breaks to <hr/> and the chapter headers to <h2>, you only have classes left that either need to be edited or not. I search for class=" then I skip all the HTML with no classes as I know that's OK.

And one other thing I do that I forgot to mention is I use the Modify ePub plugin before editing. Here are my Modify ePub settings. You usually have to run it three times before it says there is nothing left to change (on the third run).

[icallaci]

I edit CSS to satisfy my OCD, lol. Unlike JSWolf, I want things spelled out, so I add class="whatever" to bare tags so that I know exactly what each one is supposed to do without traipsing back and forth in the CSS to find the parent class. If I run across a problem while I'm reading (and in some books, there are LOTS of problems--different font sizes, paragraph indents, header spacing--you name it), I want to be able to go directly to ONE class, edit it, and be done. Also, even though most ereaders handle errors by ignoring them, I like my books to be as error free as possible, even if the problems are not visible. I don't want to run into problems in the future if at some point a particular error causes problems. I really don’t care how a book is formatted, as long as it is consistent: I don’t want to “notice” anything while I am reading. It is amazing to me how inconsistent the formatting in some books is, almost as if different people have worked on different parts of it without adhering to any particular standard. And, of course, once I notice something like this, my brain is looking for it, so I can’t concentrate on what the book is actually saying. It sounds like a lot of work, but most of the time it’s not, especially after you develop a routine.