Line Break Madness on Nook

[JSWolf]

AuthorGreg, if you are using the CSS that has 5% left/right margins, please change it. They are awful looking And they look even worse the bigger the screen gets. A margin should never be using a variable specification. Margins should be using pt or px, never em or %.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Well, I think it looks nice. I found small pixel margins to be too close to the edge of the device (and not pleasurable FOR ME ).

Also, I like that I have the blockquotes at 10% (double the left/right margins of the book). I also think that this looks pleasurable on any screen size. (I originally did most of my EPUB reading on a 22" PC Monitor... none of these tablets can get much larger than that).

While you may like such variably huge margins, a lot of people won't. When creating an eBook for sale, you sometimes have to forgo your personal preferences for what works for most.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

While you may like such variably huge margins, a lot of people won't. When creating an eBook for sale, you sometimes have to forgo your personal preferences for what works for most.

Feel free to do a poll... all of the publishers/authors I have converted books for think my 5% margins (on any of the multitude of devices they test on) are pleasant as well.

Also, it is infinitely better than the dreaded ##em left/right margins I have seen in lots of purchased books. Now THAT is something you should complain about.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Feel free to do a poll... all of the publishers/authors I have converted books for think my 5% margins (on any of the multitude of devices they test on) are pleasant as well.

Also, it is infinitely better than the dreaded ##em left/right margins I have seen in lots of purchased books. Now THAT is something you should complain about.

A lot of the publishers have their heads stuck firmly up their tush when it comes to proper eBook formatting, And wide margins is one of the issues.

[gbm]

Originally Posted by AuthorGreg

Greetings All!

I hand-coded a book entirely in HTML and CSS. I learned from a book how to package ePubs. All HTML and CSS files passed validation. The ePub passed validation on the IDPF site. The book, when side-loaded on a Nook, looks beautiful. Everything displays as it should. The same goes for Adobe Digital Editions.

Even on the Nook Press site it looks good with the provided Nook Previewer.

BUT!

When I went to Barnes & Noble tonight, to my horror I saw that on every Nook model that there are line breaks after EVERY paragraph. All of these would have been styled with p elements.

My CSS for p elements is as follows:

p
{
text-indent: 1.25em;
margin: 0;
widows: 2;
orphans: 2; 
}

The only exception is this CSS for the first paragraph of each chapter, and this comes after the first p element:

p.texttop
{
margin: 1.5em 0 0 0;
text-indent: 0;
}

I'm at a total loss. Nook Press Support, needless to say, was at a loss. I have verified also that after the KindleGen process, everything looks superb on the Kindle (though I am, of course, using a different CSS file for the Kindle as well as making the necessary mods in the ePub structure).

Any help would be groovy.

Thanks!

Greg

I think this thread may help with your problem. Post #13-#21. Nook does not like condensed margins when not using publisher defaults.

bernie

bernie

[Tex2002ans]

While you may like such variably huge fixed tiny margins, a lot of people won't. When creating an eBook for sale, you sometimes have to forgo your personal preferences for what works for most.

Originally Posted by gbm

I think this thread may help with your problem. Post #13-#21. Nook does not like condensed margins when not using publisher defaults.

Hmmm... did not about this potential bug... is this on a specific Nook device/firmware?

I will have to look into this on my Nook and see if the problem occurs there too. I personally always just use the long-form: margin-top, margin-bottom, margin-left, margin-right. (I see it as much more human readable, easier to understand (for those who don't know CSS), and easier to go in and edit).

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Feel free to do a poll... all of the publishers/authors I have converted books for think my 5% margins (on any of the multitude of devices they test on) are pleasant as well.

Also, it is infinitely better than the dreaded ##em left/right margins I have seen in lots of purchased books. Now THAT is something you should complain about.

My margins are supplied by the device BEZEL. I don't want to waste expensive screen space doing something the Hardware provides almost for free.

I bet those FANS of big margins are viewing on big Computer Monitors

Many of us ONLY read on handheld, portable devices

[JSWolf]

And if it's being sold by B&N, chances are people are reading on an eInk Reader or a tablet. If it's a tablet, the margins will be even bigger using 5%. 5% of a tabket screen is a lot of wasted space.

[GrannyGrump]

@JSWolf
If you prefer using pt/px as your document margin, how do you style side margins for blockquotes and divs when you want a wider margin? Do you personally use %, em, or a fixed measurement in pt/px/cm?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

@JSWolf
If you prefer using pt/px as your document margin, how do you style side margins for blockquotes and divs when you want a wider margin? Do you personally use %, em, or a fixed measurement in pt/px/cm?

If I am not mistaken, a blockquote's default margins is 1.2em top/bottom and 42px left/right.

What I use is 1em top/bottom and 1.5 or 2em left/right. For a blockquote, em is OK. It's left/right and top/bottom margins (for the entire screen) should be fixed. If you have a 6" eInk screen, 5% will give a certain margin. On an iPad, a 5% margin will be larger. top/bottom & left/right margins should always be fixed. If the purpose of the margins is to prevent the text from betting up against the side of the screen/bezel/window then you don't need a large margin. For that sort of margin, I've seen 5-9pt used and that works without being too big for most people. I know some (myself included) like the margins as small as possible.

Oh, in some ePub, the blockquote is simulated. The publisher does not use a true blockquote. The use multiple classes to do the simulation. And sometimes, they don't bother to set a right margin. This is a holdover from Mobipocket on the Kindle and it's very bad practice. So I go into the CSS and fix the simulated blockquotes to have proper margins instead of the sometimes mess of margins they use. Heck, I've even seen 5% left/right margins on a simulated blockquote. And I do make sure there right margin matches the left margin because I do want things to look good. Mobipocket style blockquotes look awful.

[GrannyGrump]

Well, I guess you might say I have one foot in both camps

I have always used 5pt as the body margin ***fixed margin***
And used either 2em or (more recently) 5% for blockquotes and divs ***variable margin***

I started using % for the blockquotes when I saw some folks complaining about margins that varied with font size.

There's just no pleasing everybody all the time, I guess.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If I am not mistaken, a blockquote's default margins is 1.2em top/bottom and 42px left/right.

What I use is 1em top/bottom and 1.5 or 2em left/right. For a blockquote, em is OK. It's left/right and top/bottom margins (for the entire screen) should be fixed. If you have a 6" eInk screen, 5% will give a certain margin. On an iPad, a 5% margin will be larger. top/bottom & left/right margins should always be fixed. If the purpose of the margins is to prevent the text from betting up against the side of the screen/bezel/window then you don't need a large margin. For that sort of margin, I've seen 5-9pt used and that works without being too big for most people. I know some (myself included) like the margins as small as possible.

AFAIK, B&N actually stipulates, I believe, that L&R margins have to be set in pix/pts. I'd have to go check, but I think that's right. This is for the page/screen, not blockquotes. I believe we use ems internally for any type of indentation or blockquotes, generally.

Oh, in some ePub, the blockquote is simulated. The publisher does not use a true blockquote. The use multiple classes to do the simulation. And sometimes, they don't bother to set a right margin. This is a holdover from Mobipocket on the Kindle and it's very bad practice. So I go into the CSS and fix the simulated blockquotes to have proper margins instead of the sometimes mess of margins they use. Heck, I've even seen 5% left/right margins on a simulated blockquote. And I do make sure there right margin matches the left margin because I do want things to look good. Mobipocket style blockquotes look awful.

Wolfie:

For production houses, many only do what will work. We've used an indent at times on the left-hand-side only for some books, simply because the pain of explaining the issue about right-hand-margins to a client when they got the e-ink version of the book was more aggravation than it's worth. This was generally 2009-10, maybe 11. Nowadays, of course, using a blockquote is simplicity because you can specify a fall-back for the K7 devices, but let us not forget, t'was not ever so. You may well see books made even as recently as 2009 that still only use a left-margin. {shrug}.

I had a client this week who's in a snit because we made a book for him in 2011, using certain elements/images. Poet, of course. His new book doesn't look like his old book, because much of what we did then, that suited the K7 einks, won't work now, particularly with the HD screens (having to do with a repeating image). He sent me a very snotty email, telling me he was going to turn in a Proof sheet, and demand that my crew download the archived file from 2011 and instruct them to make the new book to match. I had to write back and tell him, "listen, it's your choice, but here's what it's going to look like, which is why we chose to make this this way, as X (one of my staffers) has tried to explain to you in the last four emails about this."

What we did worked then. There wasn't anything "wrong" with it. Today, it would be sloppy bookmaking, and it would not work with all the myriad devices flying around, and certainly not with the hi-rez screens. {shrug}. Things change, Wolfie. You gotta stop being so black-and-white about everything. Time alters perceptions, memories, and procedures. When you look at a book and think that the bookmaker made it 'wrongly,' or used a left-hand-only blockquote, you have to look at when the book was made, to put the building into context.

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

When you look at a book and think that the bookmaker made it 'wrongly,' or used a left-hand-only blockquote, you have to look at when the book was made, to put the building into context.

Also, there are quite a lot of books I have run into that have the left-hand only margin for blockquotes. Most of the time I decide to match the look of the blockquotes in the EPUB edition.

It is always nice to have access to the Physical/PDF edition of the book, so you can make references as to what exactly the typesetter was thinking... much better than when you only have access to a HORRIBLE EPUB/MOBI conversion.

[GrannyGrump]

For that matter, many old fiction books (I haven't paid attention about contemporary books) had NO DIFFERENCE IN MARGIN AT ALL for "blockquotes". They only decreased the font size a small amount (maybe 90% or 95% of normal).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

Well, I guess you might say I have one foot in both camps

I have always used 5pt as the body margin ***fixed margin***
And used either 2em or (more recently) 5% for blockquotes and divs ***variable margin***

I started using % for the blockquotes when I saw some folks complaining about margins that varied with font size.

There's just no pleasing everybody all the time, I guess.

Well, I would highly complain about 5% margins for anything. That's just too larger and that actually varies based on the screen/app window size. % for a margin is a very bad idea as it's too variable and can be too large sometimes. 5% is of the too variable and too large varieties. On an iPhone screen, 5% margins make10% screen waste and that is very large amount of the space wasted leaving a small amount of space for the text.

2em works on an iPhone screen. So if it can work on such a smallish screen, it can work very well on larger screens. Stick with 2em and you'll be much better off.