Further chapters in the saga of bad ebook formatting

[HarryT]

I'm not at all sure that publishers have become more amenable. Specifically requesting (and fixing) errors seems to be something unique to SF Gateway. They do a good job, though, which is why I mentioned the matter.

[Joques]

Good for them

[Joques]

Back to the GAP book at hand - is there anybody here who has a hardcopy of this book and can verify whether stations on a ship (helm station, data station, command station etc) is also capitalized "Station" in the hardcopy? It seems very weird to me to write "data Station" and "emergency (or combat) Stations" like this - lowercase in the first word and uppercase in the second. Right now I am assuming it is a search-replace error.

[HarryT]

I don't have the book, but that would be very poor English. I'm sure it must be a lower-case "s".

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Joques

Back to the GAP book at hand - is there anybody here who has a hardcopy of this book and can verify whether stations on a ship (helm station, data station, command station etc) is also capitalized "Station" in the hardcopy? It seems very weird to me to write "data Station" and "emergency (or combat) Stations" like this - lowercase in the first word and uppercase in the second. Right now I am assuming it is a search-replace error.

I've had to look a long time to find one, but I found "command station" in the first Min chapter of the mass market paperback. Definitely lower case.

[Joques]

Thank you! I suspected as much, and had in fact already gone through the file and made the changes.

[DiapDealer]

Quotes from the current book I'm reading:

... bustled with a mid-day crowd larger than body-text.

... held gawkers and photographers, quite few more than body-textly lunched here.

... until our breathing came back to body-text.

"Martin, it's body-text to be angry under the circumstances.

The one where I'm your body-text thirty-eight old widower ...

Soon, the world would return to body-text for a bit.

... bit scarier in my estimation than the body-text variety, truth be told.

Spoiler:

Instead of replacing all occurrences of "normal" with "body-text" in one fell swoop, I would have suggested limiting the search to 'class="normal" ', myself. Hurr derp.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Quotes from the current book I'm reading:

Spoiler:

Instead of replacing all occurrences of "normal" with "body-text" in one fell swoop, I would have suggested limiting the search to 'class="normal" ', myself. Hurr derp.

Or at least look at the text after the replace before saving. And shouldn't 'class="normal" only be in the css anyway? No need to do the replace in the text.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Or at least look at the text after the replace before saving. And shouldn't 'class="normal" only be in the css anyway? No need to do the replace in the text.

No, that would occur in the normal (x)html markup. Something like:

<p class="normal">This is normal body text</p>

The CSS would then contain something like:
p.normal { text-indent: 1.2em; text-align: justify; }

So it is necessary to replace it in the text (if you want to change the class name), but it's definitely a rookie mistake to try and match & replace everyday "words" in the html attributes without taking into account the possibility of those everyday words occurring in the content. Need to refine the search to isolate the markup/attributes only.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

No, that would occur in the normal (x)html markup. Something like:

<p class="normal">This is normal body text</p>

The CSS would then contain something like:
p.normal { text-indent: 1.2em; text-align: justify; }

So it is necessary to the replace it in the text (if you want to change the class name), but it's definitely a rookie mistake to try and match & replace everyday "words" in the html attributes without taking into account the possibility of those everyday words occurring in the content. Need to refine the search to isolate the markup/attributes only.

Oh yeah. Doh! That's what I get for replying without my brain.

[Turtle91]

Although I personally would consider <p class="normal"> a bit redundant...if it is a "normal" paragraph then just use the "normal" tag <p> and style that in your css "p {}"...no need to waste all those memory bits to say it is normal. Reserve classes for those things that are different than normal....

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Although I personally would consider <p class="normal"> a bit redundant...if it is a "normal" paragraph then just use the "normal" tag <p> and style that in your css "p {}"...no need to waste all those memory bits to say it is normal. Reserve classes for those things that are different than normal....

I'm not making any value judgements on the creator's coding conventions. I couldn't care any less if someone wants to give every element a class or not. The memory bits "saved" in an ebook by not doing so are meaningless, IMO. To each their own. I'm merely pointing out the likely Search & Replace scenario that caused the snafu in the first place. I enjoy reverse engineering those kinds of S&R screw-ups.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm merely pointing out the likely Search & Replace scenario that caused the snafu in the first place. I enjoy reverse engineering those kinds of S&R screw-ups.

Oh, I know...just thought I'd throw out the absurdity of putting something like <p class="normal"> or <p class="paragraph">

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The memory bits "saved" in an ebook by not doing so are meaningless, IMO.

Perhaps... for a single paragraph, certainly. But when you have 7000 paragraphs in a book it adds up. Now add up the several thousand books in an elibrary... not something to pooh-pooh.
...and there is always the fact that the larger the file size, the more styling codes a device has to chunk through to properly render the text, the longer it takes... and the device tends to bog down.
...and it's just not good practice...it's like spaghetti programming...ewww

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Quotes from the current book I'm reading:

For what it is worth I think not proofreading before releasing the ebook is a far worse error than careless search and replace or clumsy CSS.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

For what it is worth I think not proofreading before releasing the ebook is a far worse error than careless search and replace or clumsy CSS.

In fairness, they may well have proof-read the book before making this change. One doesn't normally completely re-read a book after making a CSS change. It's human error.