Next chapter in the saga of poor ebook formatting

[Joques]

Well, I think we can all agree that at least one of the published versions of the book has messed up formatting, and that it really shouldn't be the customer's job to technically break the law by removing DRM so they can correct the publisher's mistakes

I just checked the copyright page, and my copy is from Gollancz in Britain.

[Joques]

Originally Posted by murg

Scene breaks should not be handled in CSS.

Scene breaks are content, not formatting.

For eReaders (which means epubs) scene breaks should be something other than a space, either asterisks or a line or something. A space scene break will completely disappear if it is displayed at the top or bottom of the screen.

This is why physical books use * * * if the scene break is at the top of bottom of a physical page.

Well, that's a moot point, since I reckon about 90-95 % of all the ebooks I've read have scene breaks that are just white space. Almost never dashes or asterisks or what have you.

I guess my perspective is that it is vastly preferable for this to be handled in css, since that makes it so much easier for me to change it to my preference, instead of hunting down every instance of extra "manual" line breaks in a text.

The funny thing is, I probably wouldn't even have started caring about any of this if sloppy publisher formatting hadn't reached a certain threshold with me and I finally had enough and wouldn't take it anymore. I might still be a docile, DRM-accepting, model customer if I hadn't gotten fed up with this kind of crap Now I won't even consider buying a book if I can't download the file and de-DRM it (some releases on the Kobo store are like this - direct download to device only) and edit the formatting and NOT LEAST correct spelling and other errors (which are still depressingly rife even with new releases). If they introduce true non-removable DRM across the board, well, I have enough books already to last well into my retirement - and I'm only 41

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by murg

Scene breaks should not be handled in CSS.

Scene breaks are content, not formatting.

For eReaders (which means epubs) scene breaks should be something other than a space, either asterisks or a line or something. A space scene break will completely disappear if it is displayed at the top or bottom of the screen.

This is why physical books use * * * if the scene break is at the top of bottom of a physical page.

That's why the first paragraph after a scene break, like the first paragraph in a chapter, should not have a first line indentation, as a visual cue to the reader that it's a new scene.

[Joques]

Harry, I don't think I've seen a book (yet) where scene breaks were indented? Do you see that often?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Joques

Harry, I don't think I've seen a book (yet) where scene breaks were indented? Do you see that often?

No, I don't. Most publishers do it right.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Joques

Well, I think we can all agree that at least one of the published versions of the book has messed up formatting, and that it really shouldn't be the customer's job to technically break the law by removing DRM so they can correct the publisher's mistakes

I just checked the copyright page, and my copy is from Gollancz in Britain.

If this is a Gateway edition, it's worth reporting the errors to them. They are very responsive when it comes to putting things right. I had a Joe Haldeman book a couple of years ago with a number of errors, and when I reported them to them they had a new corrected version out within a few weeks.

[murg]

Originally Posted by Joques

Well, that's a moot point, since I reckon about 90-95 % of all the ebooks I've read have scene breaks that are just white space. Almost never dashes or asterisks or what have you.

I think the Baen books always have a positive scene break, usually asterisks.

Originally Posted by Joques

I guess my perspective is that it is vastly preferable for this to be handled in css, since that makes it so much easier for me to change it to my preference, instead of hunting down every instance of extra "manual" line breaks in a text.

The problem with this is that block quotes look like scene breaks.

Originally Posted by Joques

The funny thing is, I probably wouldn't even have started caring about any of this if sloppy publisher formatting hadn't reached a certain threshold with me and I finally had enough and wouldn't take it anymore. I might still be a docile, DRM-accepting, model customer if I hadn't gotten fed up with this kind of crap Now I won't even consider buying a book if I can't download the file and de-DRM it (some releases on the Kobo store are like this - direct download to device only) and edit the formatting and NOT LEAST correct spelling and other errors (which are still depressingly rife even with new releases). If they introduce true non-removable DRM across the board, well, I have enough books already to last well into my retirement - and I'm only 41

I've seen the insides of far too many ebooks.

Some are relatively clean, with normal paragraphs and slightly different paragraphs that are the scene breaks. These are usually the ebooks that were built from the original electronic files (i.e. not scanned).

Then we have the scanned books, were there are all different ways of doing scene breaks, in the same book.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by murg

The problem with this is that block quotes look like scene breaks.

Not in my experience. Block quotes are normally indented to make them stand out from normal paragraphs.

[murg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's why the first paragraph after a scene break, like the first paragraph in a chapter, should not have a first line indentation, as a visual cue to the reader that it's a new scene.

In a scanned book, if the scene break is on a page boundary, this is indistinguishable from a paragraph that continues on the next page.

In an ebook on a reader, this is indistinguishable from a paragraph that continues on the next page.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by murg

In a scanned book, if the scene break is on a page boundary, this is indistinguishable from a paragraph that continues on the next page.

That would indeed be an example of horrible formatting. Fortunately I don't recall coming across this. Are you talking about commercial ebooks here, or self-scanned ones?

[Joques]

Murg, that doesn't bother me for some reason. I guess most scene breaks are naturally distinguishable by the context, and the act of turning the page in itself is a good enough cue for me that I just detect the scene break and get on with my reading. YMMV. I can't see me ever going into my books and inserting dashes or asterisks at every scene break - that would be a huge job!

[Joques]

Wait - I am not sure what you mean by block quotes.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Joques

Wait - I am not sure what you mean by block quotes.

A block quote is a method of quoting a large amount of text by indenting it from the surrounding text (and often using a smaller font) rather than by using quotation marks. It's pretty common.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_quotation

In HTML, the "<BLOCKQUOTE> ... </BLOCKQUOTE>" tag is used for this purpose.

[mgbino]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That would indeed be an example of horrible formatting. Fortunately I don't recall coming across this. Are you talking about commercial ebooks here, or self-scanned ones?

This is a problem in the first two Deathstalker books. These are editions I bought from Amazon (us) a month ago.

[murg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That would indeed be an example of horrible formatting. Fortunately I don't recall coming across this. Are you talking about commercial ebooks here, or self-scanned ones?

Commercial.

Scene breaks are part of the content, not just formatting. Many of the scanned ebooks I've bought have been missing scene breaks, either some or all.

In a physical book, scene breaks are delineated by a wide band of empty space. Unless they occur at the top or bottom of a page, in which case they are usually represented by three asterisks (or similar character).

In an eBook, there are no pages. All scene breaks should be represented by a visible indicator.