Basic rules of ePubs

[piperclassique]

Well, each to their own. I can accept most formatting as long as the authors words hold my attention.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by piperclassique

Well, each to their own. I can accept most formatting as long as the authors words hold my attention.

Each to their own...yes...that's the point of discussion. Devices/apps that don't allow one to read the way they wish...lol

There is just some formatting that is sooo irksome that it keeps distracting me from reading the words. Wouldn't you think that the author would insist on proper formatting so people can enjoy their books??

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

There is just some formatting that is sooo irksome that it keeps distracting me from reading the words. Wouldn't you think that the author would insist on proper formatting so people can enjoy their books??

I agree. Some formatting is just so there, you cannot help but notice it and that's not something you should be doing while reading.

[JSWolf]

• Don't put in line-height unless you need it.
• Don't put in font-size in the body text unless you are doing small caps or something else that needs a different size. Small for offset text is a no-no.
• Don't use margins for the body of the eBook. Let the margins be set by the person reading using the program or Reader.
• Don't set a chapter header to have a 14% (or some other really stupid number) top margin.
• Don't use embedded fonts that look awful on an eInk screen.
• Don't use graphics to simulate text when you could don't have to.
• Don't use graphics that are of too low a resolution.

I think that's a good set of DONT'S to start with.

[icallaci]

And don't use a different font size for every class in the CSS. Drives me crazy. What's up with font sizes of 1.03, 0.997, 0.989 for text in regular paragraphs, or 0.667, 0.713, 0.704 for text on the copyright page, depending on whether it's centered, indented, justified or whatever?

Edit: I guess this falls into the "Don't put in font-size in the body text..." rule, but I don't mind seeing font sizes (except for 1em) in a class. But the slightly varying font sizes for each class is just bizarre.

[murg]

Originally Posted by icallaci

And don't use a different font size for every class in the CSS. Drives me crazy. What's up with font sizes of 1.03, 0.997, 0.989 for text in regular paragraphs, or 0.667, 0.713, 0.704 for text on the copyright page, depending on whether it's centered, indented, justified or whatever?

Edit: I guess this falls into the "Don't put in font-size in the body text..." rule, but I don't mind seeing font sizes (except for 1em) in a class. But the slightly varying font sizes for each class is just bizarre.

This is people not understanding how the automated editing/formatting tools work. And that said tools don't understand how to generate good css.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by icallaci

And don't use a different font size for every class in the CSS. Drives me crazy.

Windows now has the same problem. Font sizes are all over the place, sometimes in the same window. If you set your screen at 100%, some fonts are tiny. If you set it at 125% to make them readable, other fonts become gargantuan.

I've had ebooks that had such weird font sizes that they were virtually unreadable up until font size 4 on the Kindle (think font size 6-7 on a 24 inch 1920x1080 screen), and then jump to a huge font when set to font size 5.

[icallaci]

Originally Posted by murg

This is people not understanding how the automated editing/formatting tools work. And that said tools don't understand how to generate good css.

Most publishers have a house style sheet that could be standardized to something reasonably sane. Surely they must look at the results before sending it out into the world? Oh, wait...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by icallaci

And don't use a different font size for every class in the CSS. Drives me crazy. What's up with font sizes of 1.03, 0.997, 0.989 for text in regular paragraphs, or 0.667, 0.713, 0.704 for text on the copyright page, depending on whether it's centered, indented, justified or whatever?

Edit: I guess this falls into the "Don't put in font-size in the body text..." rule, but I don't mind seeing font sizes (except for 1em) in a class. But the slightly varying font sizes for each class is just bizarre.

Even 1em is wrong. For ePub (using ADE/RMDSK) 1em is the default.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by murg

This is people not understanding how the automated editing/formatting tools work. And that said tools don't understand how to generate good css.

It's people not looking at the code of the eBook after it's generated. It's so easy to fix these things by hand. I do it all the time and it takes no time at all.

[icallaci]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Even 1em is wrong. For ePub (using ADE/RMDSK) 1em is the default.

Correct, which is why I don't like seeing 1em as a font size. I worded it badly.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by icallaci

Correct, which is why I don't like seeing 1em as a font size. I worded it badly.

I've even seen things like a margin of .01666 and that's wrong too. These sorts of mistakes/errors can so very easily be fixed just by looking at the CSS. I can do it in less than 10 minutes. That includes removing unused CSS classes, fixing font sizes, and any margin issues.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Even 1em is wrong. For ePub (using ADE/RMDSK) 1em is the default.

"1em" is useful, although it is, as you rightly say, the default, because it allows the font size to be easily changed. If you set "1em" as the font size for something, and you later decide that you'd like it to be a little larger, it's easier to change "1em" to "1.2em" than to have to insert a new line into the CSS.

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Even 1em is wrong. For ePub (using ADE/RMDSK) 1em is the default.

Is just the default for ADE/RMDSK, or is it the default for all EPub readers (part of the EPub spec)?

[harriska2]

JSWolf, do you know of a primer and tool for fixing these issues?