formatting Gutenberg book

[franklekens]

I've downloaded H.G. Wells' Tono Bungay from Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/718, the "epub with images"). But on my Aura ONE it shows like you see in the attached photo.



So the text runs all the way up to the margins and even slightly beyond that. As you can see, it doesn't help if I specify wider margins on the Aura.


Is this particular Gutenberg epub badly formatted?
And does anybody know of a better (free) source for this novel? Editing the epub is a little too much hassle for me.
(I usually try to find classics on Feedbooks, as the formatting of their epubs is generally nicer than that on Gutenberg, but they don't have this title.)

[franklekens]

Sorry, that was a rather superfluous question: easy enough to google. This one already seems better: http://freeread.com.au/@rglibrary/HG...iFi/SciFi.html

Still, what's the problem with that particular Gutenberg Epub? Their epubs are generally better than that. And how can it block the Aura from increasing the margins?
Just curious.

[JSWolf]

Machine made eBooks from PG can be awful.

[Geenween]

Honestly I found very few well formatted ebooks from Gutenberg, I usually re-format them with Calibre before using them. Lately I've been looking at the MB ebook archive (or Feedbook, they have nice cover art on their public domain editions) before the Gutenberg one, as much as I value their work.

I've downloaded the epub and I'm trying to understand what makes the margins going so wide. If you want I can pass it to you when I'm done cleaning it.

[chrisridd]

I tried to read Lorna Doone recently from Gutenberg but the punctuation and apostrophes and quotes were just awful and very very painful to correct.

I ended up buying a version from Kobo for 49p published by Harper Perennial Classics, who put in all the donkey work to make it a high quality epub. It was cheaper for me to pay than do the work myself...

So IMO consider looking in the ebookstores even for the free stuff.

[MRC01]

Originally Posted by Geenween

Honestly I found very few well formatted ebooks from Gutenberg, I usually re-format them with Calibre before using them.

Same here. Reformat with Calibre to EPUB or KEPUB usually looks better.

[robko]

Originally Posted by franklekens

Still, what's the problem with that particular Gutenberg Epub? Their epubs are generally better than that. And how can it block the Aura from increasing the margins?

The oversimplified version ('cause I don't remember the exact details of how it all works ) is that if they have specified margins in the CSS of the book it can override your ability to change the margins on your Kobo. IIRC it's relatively easy to change that in Calibre without doing much work.
Why it happens is because basically the Kobo is following what the book is telling it to do. It has been extensively argued whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. It's not really a common thing to run into, but not really uncommon either (and happens in books from various sources).
If I have some of this wrong I'm sure those in the know will be along shortly with the correct answer .

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Geenween

Honestly I found very few well formatted ebooks from Gutenberg, I usually re-format them with Calibre before using them.

Same here, though I use Sigil.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by franklekens

And does anybody know of a better (free) source for this novel?

I've liked the books I've gotten from the University of Adelaide, though I have not checked their copy of Tono Bungay: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wells/hg/

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by franklekens

Still, what's the problem with that particular Gutenberg Epub? Their epubs are generally better than that. And how can it block the Aura from increasing the margins?
Just curious.

Are you sideloading the book as a KePub? (Edit: I see the answer is yes, now that I look at your screenshot.)

The KePub reader assumes that the first file in the book contains nothing but a cover image, and so it displays it in a special fixed-format mode. This is fine for most books which follow that convention, but many Gutenberg books either don't have a proper cover, or else put the cover in the same file with other text, and this causes the KePub reader to display the whole file in the fixed-format mode.

If that is the cause of the problem then the easiest solution is probably to use Calibre to add a proper cover to the book.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

...
The KePub reader assumes that the first file in the book contains nothing but a cover image, and so it displays it in a special fixed-format mode. ...
If that is the cause of the problem then the easiest solution is probably to use Calibre to add a proper cover to the book.

I've found that adding a cover in Calibre may only add an image that is marked as the cover. Depending on the tool/plugin you use to update the ePub, it may not actually create an xHTML file as well. You may find that opening the ePub in Calibre's Editor and adding the cover there is more effective as that will add the image and create an xHTML file containing a link to the image as well.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by dwig

I've found that adding a cover in Calibre may only add an image that is marked as the cover. Depending on the tool/plugin you use to update the ePub, it may not actually create an xHTML file as well. You may find that opening the ePub in Calibre's Editor and adding the cover there is more effective as that will add the image and create an xHTML file containing a link to the image as well.

There is only one way that I can think of that a cover gets into an epub without it being put into a xhtml file for display. And I turned that off as soon as I could. All the others, (conversion, Polish books and Modify ePub plugin are the ones I can think of) will create or update the the xhtml.

For epubs, the Kobo devices do not use the defined cover image image. The first page of the book is used as the cover. For a kepub, the cover image has to be defined properly as it is used for the lists. I'm not sure about the difference in the first page that GeoffR reported. For the one kepub I can find on my device that doesn't have image as the first page, I can adjust the font size. But, it is displayed full page without the header and footer. It isn't a good example for what is happening as it has a mix of Hebrew and Arabic and I don't have all the necessary fonts installed.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by franklekens

I've downloaded H.G. Wells' Tono Bungay from Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/718, the "epub with images"). But on my Aura ONE it shows like you see in the attached photo.



So the text runs all the way up to the margins and even slightly beyond that. As you can see, it doesn't help if I specify wider margins on the Aura.


Is this particular Gutenberg epub badly formatted?

I downloaded the ebook from the Gutenberg link you supplied, copied it to my KA1 as an epub and the margins slider is working for me. See attached screenshots.

Overall, I don't like the formatting and the css stylesheets are downright strange. One uses the body tag to set all margins at 5% while another uses the body tag to set them to 0.5em.

0.css

body {
    margin: 5%;
    background: #faebd0;
    text-align: justify
    }

pgepub.css:

body, body.tei.tei-text {
    color: black;
    background-color: white;
    margin: 0.5em;
    width: auto;
    border: 0;
    padding: 0
    }

Other chunks of the css stylesheets are similary schizoid.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by davidfor

There is only one way that I can think of that a cover gets into an epub without it being put into a xhtml file for display. And I turned that off as soon as I could. All the others, (conversion, Polish books and Modify ePub plugin are the ones I can think of) will create or update the the xhtml....

I've had the image only cover happen to me a few times, once recently. I usually add the cover in Calibre's Editor but several days ago I encounted a book with a Calibre generated cover image without an xHTML file.

I think the book was the one where I did a quickie reformat:

1. I added the book to Calibre on my desktop machine, added the cover and did a Save to Disk.
2. I then moved the exported book to my Windows tablet, which is my main Calibre machine.
3. There I added the book to the library.
4. Then a few days ago, I did a Save to Disk on the tablet to put the book into my reader app.

I found some undesireable background colors were set so I went back to Calibre on my tablet, found the book and opened it in the Editor to fix the Styles. While there I saw that there was to xHTML for the cover, only a cover JPEG. My reader app hadn't minded the lack of the xHTML, but I used Editor to generate one using the existing JPEG anyway.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by dwig

I've had the image only cover happen to me a few times, once recently. I usually add the cover in Calibre's Editor but several days ago I encounted a book with a Calibre generated cover image without an xHTML file.

I think the book was the one where I did a quickie reformat:

1. I added the book to Calibre on my desktop machine, added the cover and did a Save to Disk.
2. I then moved the exported book to my Windows tablet, which is my main Calibre machine.
3. There I added the book to the library.
4. Then a few days ago, I did a Save to Disk on the tablet to put the book into my reader app.

I found some undesireable background colors were set so I went back to Calibre on my tablet, found the book and opened it in the Editor to fix the Styles. While there I saw that there was to xHTML for the cover, only a cover JPEG. My reader app hadn't minded the lack of the xHTML, but I used Editor to generate one using the existing JPEG anyway.

The "Save to disk" is the culprit. A little while ago, the metadata updating was changed. Before this, if there was nothing that could be identified as the cover image (by name, marked as cover, used by the cover page and other things), the cover wasn't added. If the cover could be identified, it was updated. After this, the cover image in the library was added and was marked in the OPF as a cover. The next version of calibre added an option to the epub metadata writer plugin to not do this. Save to disk will update the metadata and add the cover image to the file and the OPF.

Actually, the edit could have been as well. If you have enabled the option in the editor to update the metadata when loading, then the same thing could have happened when you opened the editor.