Nook Glowlight 3 sale 89.99 at B&N website

[tiltowait]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

I see. Does Kobo in its kepub renderer do it smarter? On a Kindle I have never seen such a thing in either mobi, kf8, or kfx renderer - it will happily rip paragraphs apart if it doesn't fit on the page. Only whitespace with a real break at the end of chapter (as it should).

The kepub renderer also happily rips paragraphs apart. I think it's unique to ePub.

The feature in question isn't without merit; it's actually pretty nice in situations where a short paragraph will be split such that there's only a single-line widow or orphan. (Studies suggest avoiding those when possible enhances reading comprehension, though I'll admit I'm a bit skeptical.) But as you can see, it's ... less than ideal for works with (ridiculously) long paragraphs. "Normal" books don't have this problem.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by tiltowait

It’s not a chapter break or a scene break. It’s just one paragraph following another. Why is there so much white space? It’s absurd.

Ah! I didn't realize that those two pictures were a continuous flow of text. I thought they were two egregious instances of something else.

[tiltowait]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Ah! I didn't realize that those two pictures were a continuous flow of text. I thought they were two egregious instances of something else.

Ah, I should have made that clearer.

Anyway, here's another, semi-related problem. It's the same situation as before: one unbroken section of text being broken incorrectly. It differs in that it's unnecessarily breaking a small paragraph instead of valiantly not-breaking a large one.

This is a particularly weird instance, as there's obviously no reason for it to insert the page break. And before anyone asks: I did check the underlying HTML. The photographed text is enclosed in a single <p> tag of the same class as the rest of the body paragraphs. I can't see anything in the HTML or CSS that would cause it to behave this way. It's the second time I've seen something like this (the first was in a different book).

[DNSB]

Some rather odd examples of paragraph/page breaks posted here.

In epubs, there are widows and orphans setting which should control how many lines of a paragraph must show on a page (orphans at the bottom of a page, widows at the top of a page). The Adobe RMSDK defaults to 2/2 while I prefer 1/1 (0/0 is undefined). There was a bug in early versions of RMSDK which would cause some strange breaks in long paragraphs but that bug was fixed a couple of years back though a patch still exists in the Kobo patches since a side effect is to force widows/orphans to 1/1. Perhaps an equivalent glitch still exists in B&N's codebase.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by tiltowait

Ah, I should have made that clearer.

Anyway, here's another, semi-related problem. It's the same situation as before: one unbroken section of text being broken incorrectly. It differs in that it's unnecessarily breaking a small paragraph instead of valiantly not-breaking a large one.

This is a particularly weird instance, as there's obviously no reason for it to insert the page break. And before anyone asks: I did check the underlying HTML. The photographed text is enclosed in a single <p> tag of the same class as the rest of the body paragraphs. I can't see anything in the HTML or CSS that would cause it to behave this way. It's the second time I've seen something like this (the first was in a different book).

Was this paragraph the last in a chapter? Was it immediately followed by a </div> or </body> tag? I've seen a similar item where there was some funky blank line code after the last readable text in a paragraph.

[tiltowait]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Was this paragraph the last in a chapter? Was it immediately followed by a </div> or </body> tag? I've seen a similar item where there was some funky blank line code after the last readable text in a paragraph.

Yes to both. </p> is immediately followed by </body>. The odd thing is that other chapters are formatted the same way, yet they don't have this same problem.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by tiltowait

Ah, I should have made that clearer.

Anyway, here's another, semi-related problem. It's the same situation as before: one unbroken section of text being broken incorrectly. It differs in that it's unnecessarily breaking a small paragraph instead of valiantly not-breaking a large one.

This is a particularly weird instance, as there's obviously no reason for it to insert the page break. And before anyone asks: I did check the underlying HTML. The photographed text is enclosed in a single <p> tag of the same class as the rest of the body paragraphs. I can't see anything in the HTML or CSS that would cause it to behave this way. It's the second time I've seen something like this (the first was in a different book).

I don't remember seeing that behavior on my Nook ST, so hopefully it ill be fixed in a software update.

[tiltowait]

I just encountered the "short break" bug again. It seems to happen when the following conditions are met:

1. The "page" contains a single paragraph
2. That paragraph is the last paragraph of the chapter
3(?). That paragraph is <=4 lines
4(?). In the HTML, the </p> is followed immediately by </body>

Any idea where I can report this?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by tiltowait

I just encountered the "short break" bug again. It seems to happen when the following conditions are met:

1. The "page" contains a single paragraph
2. That paragraph is the last paragraph of the chapter
3(?). That paragraph is <=4 lines
4(?). In the HTML, the </p> is followed immediately by </body>

Any idea where I can report this?

The guy that started the Glowlight 3 partitioning update thread seems to have the inside scoop at B&N. I wrote to: lriggio@bn.com to complain about the partitioning and did get a call from someone at Barnes and Noble.

[tiltowait]

Thanks. I shot them an email.

[tiltowait]

... and I received a reply to my email!

I am in receipt of your email, to Len Riggio, regarding your experience with the NOOK GlowLight 3. On behalf of Barnes & Noble, I apologize for the delay of this communication. Please allow me this opportunity to address your concerns.

First, I would like to thank you for taking the time to let us know about your experience. We welcome all customer feedback and I have already forwarded this to the appropriate departments for further review.

Based on your provided screenshots, I was able to replicate the issue and tested some potential resolutions. By adjusting the size of the font to be smaller, the paragraph formatting may self-correct to be included on a single screen rather than splitting. Unfortunately, as eBooks are formatted to fit on a specific number of pages, enlarging the font can sometimes push the remainder into what the file considered to be a new page. This is not something we can take direct action to change but, as stated above, this feedback is under further review. I apologize that I cannot provide any timeframe for potential changes.

I hope this information is helpful.

Interesting.

[robko]

"Unfortunately, as eBooks are formatted to fit on a specific number of pages, enlarging the font can sometimes push the remainder into what the file considered to be a new page."

WHAT?!? Sad that they have no clue about the product they sell and are responding to customers about

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by robko

"Unfortunately, as eBooks are formatted to fit on a specific number of pages, enlarging the font can sometimes push the remainder into what the file considered to be a new page."

WHAT?!? Sad that they have no clue about the product they sell and are responding to customers about

Well, there's my humour quotient for the day.

[ZodWallop]

On the weird paragraph breaks, I seem to remember The eBook Reader complaining about the same thing on various Kobo reviews from a while back. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

[robko]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

On the weird paragraph breaks, I seem to remember The eBook Reader complaining about the same thing on various Kobo reviews from a while back. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

Widow/orphan settings and how they are handled in epub I believe. There has been a number of different discussions of it over the years in the Kobo forums.