italic at end of line causes next line to start with a space

[theducks]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Amazingly quickly. Scary quick, actually.

And it mostly worked correctly
Which made scary even scarier

[kovidgoyal]

Yes, indeed, my decision to develop the calibre editor was motivated by user_none stopping development of Sigil, and no one stepping up to take over for a while. IMO, it is important to have a well maintained open source tool for editing e-books. And it was easier for me to write one from scratch than take over Sigil's codebase.

As for how quickly it was developed, it comes down to three factors:

1) Leveraging calibre's already exising powerful capabilities (in particular the book container infrastructure I had created for the Polish Books tool)

2) Knowing in advance exactly what I wanted to create -- thanks to the prior existence of Sigil, designing the editor was easy since I knew what I wanted from having used Sigil.

3) Writing it in python, which, at least for me, is much quicker to develop in than C/C++

And I am glad that Sigil is once more alive and vibrant, always good to have multiple tools to choose from.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

...
2) Knowing in advance exactly what I wanted to create ...

This is one of the most important pillars of good software creation.

[KevinH]

FYI - having worked with and around many many professional developers for over 35 years, I do not say this lightly ...

Kovid is the single most productive and creative programmer I have ever seen. He accomplishes more in one hour than most programmers do in a week. His work is always understandable and supportable and has very very few bugs when first written. And if any bugs do exist, they are quickly squashed. He seems to be at home with Python, C++, C, javascript, the DOM, website development, sockets, networks, gui, etc etc. There are few if any that have such a wide range of knowledge.

Until I met him I always thought I was a pretty good programmer but ...

I have no idea why he isn't running a huge software development house somewhere and getting paid large numbers of stock options!

I also have no idea how he gets his wife to allow him to put in the amount of work he does! My wife forces me to leave things alone and take a walk more and more often.

So ... please take a bow Kovid, you definitely deserve many!

KevinH

[kovidgoyal]

Thank you for the kind words

Mostly I am just lucky that I am able to work on something I enjoy and feel passionate about.

[ebookreadr]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

I think JSWolf used

margin-top: 0;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 0;
margin-right: 0;

instead of

margin: 0;

because Nook doesn't support the shorthand form.

Regards
Rubén

The nook simple touch I use does recognize this:

margin: 0 0 0.5em;

I used to use this a lot, but have stopped inserting/changing the space after the paragraphs. Do you still consider this 'shorthand form'?

[JSWolf]

I dislike the shorthand form of margins. I prefer to have the margins done the long way.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by ebookreadr

The nook simple touch I use does recognize this:

margin: 0 0 0.5em;

I used to use this a lot, but have stopped inserting/changing the space after the paragraphs. Do you still consider this 'shorthand form'?

Hi ebookreadr;

Yes, that is one of the several shorthand form for the property margin. You could use:

margin: value; /* the four margins are equal to value */

margin: value1 value2; /* value1 is for top/bottom margins and value2 is for left/right margins */

margin: value1 value2 value3; /* value1 is for top margin, value2 is for left/right margins and value3 is for bottom margin */

margin: value1 value2 value3 value4; /* value1 is for top margin, value2 is for right margin, value3 is for bottom margin and value4 is for left margin */

Since I don't have a Nook touch, I can't tell you if that model supports the shortand form for margin. But one things is sure, not all models of Nook support that way of scripture. Here, in MR, was talked a lot about Nook and his poor support for shorthand forms of css properties.

Regards
Rubén

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I have no idea why he isn't running a huge software development house somewhere and getting paid large numbers of stock options!

Excellent doers often make lousy managers, and excellent managers often don't do much, because their excellent doers make sure they don't - "Oh no, the boss is writing code, quick let's take him/her down the pub!"

BR

[Krittika Goyal]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I also have no idea how he gets his wife to allow him to put in the amount of work he does! My wife forces me to leave things alone and take a walk more and more often.

KevinH

His work makes him happy and his happiness is contagious

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Excellent doers often make lousy managers, and excellent managers often don't do much, because their excellent doers make sure they don't - "Oh no, the boss is writing code, quick let's take him/her down the pub!"

BR

The pointy haired manager is a lousy manager and a lousy doer.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I dislike the shorthand form of margins. I prefer to have the margins done the long way.

And, as others have noted, some reader software doesn't support the shorthand, while I have never found one that supports the shorthand but not the long version. Using the long version creates more portable EPUB.

On the other hand, I would never put any margin, widow, or text-align in type selector in an EPUB stylesheet. Those belong in the user stylesheet, so they can set their defaults for the reader they use, and don't have to resort to using "!important", which makes the cascade much harder to follow for humans. In fact, the EPUB stylesheet should really only have class, ID, and pseudo-element selectors.

Basically, CSS in an EPUB should always assume the user page box is how the user wants it, and not try and change it in any way. The CSS in the EPUB should use margins to separate the blocks of the book from the edges of the user page box, and to separate boxes from each other (either vertically or horizontally), and nothing else.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

And, as others have noted, some reader software doesn't support the shorthand, while I have never found one that supports the shorthand but not the long version. Using the long version creates more portable EPUB.

On the other hand, I would never put any margin, widow, or text-align in type selector in an EPUB stylesheet. Those belong in the user stylesheet, so they can set their defaults for the reader they use, and don't have to resort to using "!important", which makes the cascade much harder to follow for humans. In fact, the EPUB stylesheet should really only have class, ID, and pseudo-element selectors.

Basically, CSS in an EPUB should always assume the user page box is how the user wants it, and not try and change it in any way. The CSS in the EPUB should use margins to separate the blocks of the book from the edges of the user page box, and to separate boxes from each other (either vertically or horizontally), and nothing else.

There is no such thing as a user stylesheet. It's just the ePub stylesheet. The "box" as you call it should be setup the best way possible so the options in the reading software can be used to set things how the user wants. Overall margins should be set to 0 so if the user wants to keep them that way, that can be done or if the user wants to increase the margins with the programs options, that can be done. Also, the base font size should be left at the default so the user can change it as wanted. A lot do find the default size to be good.

The one thing that cannot be changed in all reading programs is the indent or paragraph spaces. So it's best to have an indent of 1.2em and no paragraph space. Don't use a smaller font for things like offset text. What can be changed when there are options to change things is the font, the left/right margins, & line height. Some programs have more options but you have to go with the minimum and let these other programs do the overriding.

Don't use fixed values in CSS. Use em and % as needed. Don't use font-family unless you need to such as sans-serif or monospace. Make it as simple as possible. Don't have excess CSS entries that aren't used.

[DiapDealer]

Please, let's not turn this into another "well the right way to code an epub is ..." conversation. They're pointless, boring, and not nearly as relevant as the usual suspects like to think they are.

[chaot]

Hi!

I was advised to read something in this thread, so I did, of course I read it all, and not only once.

Conclusion: To be really informed someone have to make the issue (whatever it is) to a full time job (I am already wondering, when some of you guys 'hit the hay').

Under the thread title ''italic at end of line ...'' nobody would expect such an far-reaching info.

To be a good moderator must be a hard job.

So the least I learned here is not to use CSS shorthands - so far I thought it would be an elegant, smart method to keep the stylessheet short and spacial manageable.

I feel more and more well here! (in mobileread).