Modding Calibre CSS styles

[Olger]

Hi Folks,

I'm customizing a few recipes for news sites I download, which I'll be reading on a Kobo Touch. The problem I have with Calibre's default templates for news feeds is that the navigation links (next/previous sections, etc) are too small and more often than not result in going forward or backwards a page. Very annoying. There's also a few other CSS styles things I'd like to customize.
I have the CSS styles that I want, and which work a lot better, but I can't find where Calibre keeps its templates. I'm working mostly on a Windows 7 machine with Calibre, and have been searching the C:\Program Files\Calibre for the files but no joy.
I've tried using the extra_css option in the recipe but that appears to be ignored. For that matter, the author and publisher field is also ignored.
Anybody able to point me to where those darn templates are stored? Driving me nuts...
Cheers! Olger.

[kovidgoyal]

The templates are not stored anywhere, they're hardcoded.

[Olger]

Thanks Kovid,
Any idea why extra_css doesn't work? Here's the recipe I've got:
from calibre.web.feeds.recipes import BasicNewsRecipe

class ABCNewsRecipe(BasicNewsRecipe):
feeds = [
(u'News: Top Stories', u'http://www.abc.net.au/news/feed/45910/rss.xml'),
(u'News: World', u'http://www.abc.net.au/news/feed/52278/rss.xml'),
(u'News: Australia', u'http://www.abc.net.au/news/feed/46182/rss.xml'),
(u'News: Queensland', u'http://www.abc.net.au/news/feed/50990/rss.xml'),
(u'News: Business', u'http://www.abc.net.au/news/feed/51892/rss.xml'),
(u'Science', u'http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/topic/latest/latest.xml')
]

title = u'ABC News'
oldest_article = 1
max_articles_per_feed = 100
auto_cleanup = True
cover_url = 'file:///d:/ebooks/covers/abcnewscover.jpg'
publication_type = 'newspaper'
author = 'ABC News'
publisher = 'ABC News'
extra_css = ':link:hover { background-color:blue; color: white;}'

Cheers!

[kovidgoyal]

CSS has complex specificity rules. The rules you specify may not have high enough specificity to override the builtin ones.

[Olger]

I've used Sigil to place the below CSS rules at the end of the stylesheet.css file created by Calibre in the epub file. That overrides all the styles with the same names earlier in the stylesheet.css, which works fine.
My problem is that extra_css (which is supposed to place an entry in the Styles section in each html file) doesn't add those styles. Calibre seems to ignore my extra_css or there's something not right with how I'm specifying the option. It follows pretty much what the manual says.
The same problem occurs with the author and publisher option. So I'm thinking there's something else not right? Everything is indented (with spaces) as required by python.
If I can get extra_css to work, I'm sure I'll get the styles working the way I want too.
Any ideas? Cheers!

.calibrenavbar {
display: block;
font-family: monospace;
font-size: 1.0em;
text-align: center;
padding: 4px;
}
.article {
color: blue;
cursor: pointer;
font-size: 1.2em;
font-weight: bold;
line-height: 1.2;
text-align: left;
text-decoration: underline;
}
.articledate {
color: gray;
font-family: monospace;
font-size: 0.9em;
}
.articledescription {
display: block;
font-size: 0.8em;
text-indent: 0;
}
:link:active { background-color:blue; color: white;}
:link:hover { background-color:blue; color: white;}
.calibrenavbar.a {
color: blue;
cursor: pointer;
text-decoration: none;
}
a {padding: 4px; }

[kovidgoyal]

I looked at the code, the font sizes for the navbars are not overridable via extra css (they are specified to be 70% of whatever calibre calculates the base font size for the document to be).

[Olger]

Sigh. Maybe something to consider as a new feature for a future release? Allow custom CSS into the default stylesheet.css? Could easily be done through an option in the recipe? Add_CSS = '/home/user/blabla' and simply append it to the stylesheet.css?
Anyway, thanks for commenting!
Cheers! Olger.

[Olger]

Finally managed to find a work around for at least part of it. Increasing the size of the navigation bar in recipes can be done, but only on a global (as in entire ebook) scale.
Adding the following:
extra_css = """
a { font-size: 1em; padding: 6px;}
"""
worked a treat for me. It basically increases the size and padding for every anchor in the ebook. Not an issue for me.
Hope someone else find this usefull.
Cheers!