Problem adding extra lines in text

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Jellby

I'm not talking about reliable spacing, but about reliably replacing the spacing with asterisms when at a page border.

I think that cannot be done reliably. You would need to be able to check where you are on the screen in order to decide to use a space or asterisks. I know that cannot be done inePub 2, but maybe in ePub 3 with JS (just a guess) and the JS solution would not be backwards compatible and thus, an overall fail.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

2. Empty space can be reliably done. I use padding-top: 2em and that works even if the section/scene break falls at the bottom/top of the screen. Plus, you should have the first paragraph of the new section be non-indented. Using margin-top: 2em is not reliable and doesn't work for the bottom/top of the page.

It's not correct to say padding-top is the best solution in all scenarios. The fact that padding is still honored at the top of a new 'page' doesn't mean the publisher (or reader) will want it to do that. Extra padding at the top of a new page is a "big waste of space" - as you so like to point out from Chapter headers - and is even compounded when you make use of the widows/orphans setting. As you know, using widows/orphans will push a paragraph onto the next page leaving a couple lines of empty space at the end of the first page plus a couple lines at the beginning of the 2nd page due to the padding-top.

Using margin-top will reliably put spacing between paragraphs in the middle of a page, and if it just so happens that the widows/orphans pushes the next paragraph to the next page (leaving space at the end of the previous page) it will NOT put even more space at the top of the next page. This is much cleaner, IMO, and doesn't waste the valuable reading landscape.

The other option, as others have mentioned, is to use an asterism of some kind all the time, either asterisks or a fleuron or something. You will still have the same issue of extra space being generated/wasted at the top of a page if you use padding...

I think it is appropriate to be aware of the pluses and minuses of both tools, and use the proper tool for the scenario presented. You don't need to push one tool over another.

Here are a couple of images to illustrate the point:

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

It's not correct to say padding-top is the best solution in all scenarios. The fact that padding is still honored at the top of a new 'page' doesn't mean the publisher (or reader) will want it to do that. Extra padding at the top of a new page is a "big waste of space" - as you so like to point out from Chapter headers - and is even compounded when you make use of the widows/orphans setting. As you know, using widows/orphans will push a paragraph onto the next page leaving a couple lines of empty space at the end of the first page plus a couple lines at the beginning of the 2nd page due to the padding-top.

Using margin-top will reliably put spacing between paragraphs in the middle of a page, and if it just so happens that the widows/orphans pushes the next paragraph to the next page (leaving space at the end of the previous page) it will NOT put even more space at the top of the next page. This is much cleaner, IMO, and doesn't waste the valuable reading landscape.

The other option, as others have mentioned, is to use an asterism of some kind all the time, either asterisks or a fleuron or something. You will still have the same issue of extra space being generated/wasted at the top of a page if you use padding...

I think it is appropriate to be aware of the pluses and minuses of both tools, and use the proper tool for the scenario presented. You don't need to push one tool over another.

Here are a couple of images to illustrate the point:

padding does work better then margin for blank space for section breaks. We cannot do what the pBooks do and put asterisks at the bottom of the page to signify a section break. So want to have the full space even if it wraps to the next page at the top. This lets us know it's a section break instead of widows and orphans.

For asterisks, margins work no problem.

[Turtle91]

I think you mentioned that you also don't indent the first paragraph after a section break. I think that's a good idea as well. That tells the user/reader that something is different without having to lose space at the top of a new page.

You can even add special stuff if you are so inclined to make it even more obvious...like a Large(r) first letter, or something. I've seen lots of examples where the author /publisher can get that artistic flare while still keeping the css relatively simple.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I think you mentioned that you also don't indent the first paragraph after a section break. I think that's a good idea as well. That tells the user/reader that something is different without having to lose space at the top of a new page.

You can even add special stuff if you are so inclined to make it even more obvious...like a Large(r) first letter, or something. I've seen lots of examples where the author /publisher can get that artistic flare while still keeping the css relatively simple.

We always (unless overridden by the client--I sometimes wonder if any of them have seen a damn book!--you know how many times we get proof forms telling us we made a 'mistake' by not-indenting paragraphs at the beginning of a new chapter or after a scene break?) make our post-scene-break paragraphs block-style for that reason.

I like fleurons; but we get a lot of customers that have a crapload of new scenes and that starts to get to be an eyesore if you routinely have 1-2 fleurons on every page/screen. We did a book recently in which, for the print version, we had 3 fleurons/page, on average. It made my damn eyes hurt to look at it. For a book like that--an eBook--honestly, I don't see a choice if you really want the reader to know where a screen break occurs.

Especially now that (yes, yes, I know this is the ePUB forum, but...) MOBI is doing that keep-together cruft. You get LOTS of extra space at the bottom of pages and it's horribly distracting. I constantly think that I'm at the end of a scene, or the end of a chapter, and WRONG, I'm not. It's annoying as hell.

SO, gang, as much as my inner bookmaker likes the space-only scenebreak...you simply can't only do that if the file is going to be ePUB-ified or MOBI-fied. Remember our jobs--as bookmakers--to not get between the story and the reader, right? To make the content readable and enjoyable or at least, understandable, yes? So...like it or not, asterisms, or fleurons or a signal flare, something, is needed on digital devices.

And using 2em padding--to my way of thinking, it causes the same issues as the MOBI keep-together crap. I like it, in a pure way, but in a practical way...well, see Dion's examples.

IMHO, of course.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

@hitch, what do you think of an <hr/> with left/right margins of 45%? It gives a thin line that's not too annoying (IMHO). The three asterisks (to me) looks like it came form a pBook where they are supposed to be at the end/beginning of the page. That's why I don't like them. So if some sort of section break marker is to be used, don't do asterisks.

[Quoth]

The centred * * * is very very common as an IN the page scene break in printed books.
An hr with big margins does look OK but how do you input it in source text? Also it looks bad on printed books.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The centred * * * is very very common as an IN the page scene break in printed books.
An hr with big margins does look OK but how do you input it in source text? Also it looks bad on printed books.

We are talking eBooks. And you just have to add the code where the section breaks are. A search/replace might work.

I've always said that what works on a pbook doesn't always work on a eBook and trying to gett he eBook to look like the pBook is not always a good idea. The reverse is also true.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

@hitch, what do you think of an <hr/> with left/right margins of 45%? It gives a thin line that's not too annoying (IMHO). The three asterisks (to me) looks like it came form a pBook where they are supposed to be at the end/beginning of the page. That's why I don't like them. So if some sort of section break marker is to be used, don't do asterisks.

I'm okay with it. OR, an h/r (not really) with a graphic in the middle. I think that they can look quite nice. I get what you're saying, but they're used for more than page ends/starts.

Originally Posted by Quoth

The centred * * * is very very common as an IN the page scene break in printed books.
An hr with big margins does look OK but how do you input it in source text? Also it looks bad on printed books.

Right--they are used for a huge variety of things.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

We are talking eBooks. And you just have to add the code where the section breaks are. A search/replace might work.

I've always said that what works on a pbook doesn't always work on a eBook and trying to gett he eBook to look like the pBook is not always a good idea. The reverse is also true.

Indeed, but Wolfie, it's not undoable. You simply have to adjust your expectations.

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Jellby

3. Unfortunately, it makes too many ebook conversions to "exactly" match the print version and have two kinds of scene breaks: with spacing and with asterism. It looks like they have different meanings, but they have not!

Yes, I remember reading an ebook that did this. Maybe 75% scenes were margins+noindent only, and 25% used asterisks.

I was using Moon+ Reader (which overwrites nearly all book CSS), and I was completely confused. Most of the book was skipping completely "randomly", very jarring... until I reached much further and saw a * * *.

Then I looked at the book in Sigil... Every single spot I was confused, there was actually a gap+noindent...

That's where an ebook formatter should've normalized them all to asterisks.

For more reasoning on why, read links in my Post #8 + the fantastic 2018 EPUBSecrets article, "User Experience: What Works, and How?".

Not good to rely 100% on CSS for something as important as a scenebreak.

Originally Posted by Jellby

some print books use spacing as "scene break", but if the scene break happens to fall at a page boundary, it is marked with an asterism of some sort. This makes the reader aware that there is a scene break, something that would be easily missed if it was only marked with spacing/indent.

1. Has this been successfully done in ePub books?

No. But I swear there was a topic where it was brought up a few years ago though, where someone wanted to use EPUB3 + Javascript... but I couldn't find it.

Anyone else remember this? Or was it my imagination?

* * *

In LaTeX, there's a handful of discussions about "automating" this:

• 2013 "“Scene breaks” — Blank lines that are nonblank at the top/bottom of a page"
• 2011 "Paragraph breaks with asterisks"

And in one of the more popular packages, memoir, there's a \pfbreak (Plain Fancy Break) macro for what they call "anonymous divisions":

6.7 Fancy Anonymous Breaks

Often, in novels, there is a need to break up the text to indicate that there is a major break in the story, but not enough to warrant starting a new chapter. I have called these anonymous divisions as there is neither number nor title associated with them.

[...]

If a plain break comes at the top or bottom of a page then it is very difficult for a reader to discern that there is a break at all. If there is text on the page and enough space left to put some text after a break the \plainfancybreak command will use a \plainbreak with <num> lines, otherwise (the break would come at the top or bottom of the page) it will use a \fancybreak with <text>.

But a lot of this stuff is only possible because you get full access to the rendering innards.

... not really possible in EPUB. (Maybe Javascript can override text depending on % vertical location on screen?)

Originally Posted by Jellby

2. Since I believe it cannot be reliably done, I prefer to always use asterisms. Sure, extra spacing can be enforced, but it's easy to miss at the top/bottom of a page.

Agreed and agreed.

The simple gap+noindent also causes issues when the new scene starts at the very top of a page. You'll assume it's a continued/split paragraph from the previous screen.

I think the one I read all those years ago was Andy Weir's The Martian. I just checked, and they mix Chapters > Daily Logs > gap+noindent / 3 centered bullets •••:



Image 1 is the previous page.

Image 2, you can see the gap+noindent landing on the very top of the screen. No reasonable person would notice this. You would continue reading, then wonder why there was just a drastic change in scene/tone, become confused, MAYBE click back... and/or just continue reading.

Image 3 shows centered bullets in a later chapter.

Overall, not the best ebook decisions, and probably just replicated the Print formatting...

Nobody is reading the book at Image 1 and thinking: "Oh, that final word ends before hitting the right margin... the paragraph on next screen might start with no indent!"

Side Note: Also, another potential reason against gap+noindent is users may read with (*shudders just thinking about it*) left aligned or "block paragraphs".

Originally Posted by Hitch

SO, gang, as much as my inner bookmaker likes the space-only scenebreak...you simply can't only do that if the file is going to be ePUB-ified or MOBI-fied. Remember our jobs--as bookmakers--to not get between the story and the reader, right? To make the content readable and enjoyable or at least, understandable, yes? So...like it or not, asterisms, or fleurons or a signal flare, something, is needed on digital devices.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'm okay with it. OR, an h/r (not really) with a graphic in the middle. I think that they can look quite nice. I get what you're saying, but they're used for more than page ends/starts.

I've seen some eBooks recently that used <hr/> as part of the section break and it worked pretty well. It wasn't annoying and it wasn't asterisks.

Indeed, but Wolfie, it's not undoable. You simply have to adjust your expectations.

Hitch

I have expectations that someday the BPH's will get off their collective asses and actually make well formatted eBooks instead of a shoddy mess (in most cases).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

The simple gap+noindent also causes issues when the new scene starts at the very top of a page. You'll assume it's a continued/split paragraph from the previous screen.

I think the one I read all those years ago was Andy Weir's The Martian. I just checked, and they mix Chapters > Daily Logs > gap+noindent / 3 centered bullets •••:

Attachment 180387 Attachment 180388 Attachment 180389

Image 1 is the previous page.

Image 2, you can see the gap+noindent landing on the very top of the screen. No reasonable person would notice this. You would continue reading, then wonder why there was just a drastic change in scene/tone, become confused, MAYBE click back... and/or just continue reading.

Image 3 shows centered bullets in a later chapter.

Overall, not the best ebook decisions, and probably just replicated the Print formatting...

Nobody is reading the book at Image 1 and thinking: "Oh, that final word ends before hitting the right margin... the paragraph on next screen might start with no indent!"

Side Note: Also, another potential reason against gap+noindent is users may read with (*shudders just thinking about it*) left aligned or "block paragraphs".

The problem with image 1 and image 2 is that the eBook is using the wrong CSS code for making theo section break gap. You should use padding instead of margins. Padding does not get lost at the bottom/top like it does in your examples. Also, some eBooks are using just a 1em gap for the section break and that is not large enough. I use a 2em gap.

.sectionbreak {
  padding-top: 2em;
  text-indent: 0;
}

[DiapDealer]

For god's sake, can we move past your padding vs margin obsession? They're talking about blank space provided 100% by css in general not being sufficient. Which exact css properties are being used to achieve that insufficient blank space is irrelevant to that particular conversation.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

For god's sake, can we move past your padding vs margin obsession? They're talking about blank space provided 100% by css in general not being sufficient. Which exact css properties are being used to achieve that insufficient blank space is irrelevant to that particular conversation.

But it is sufficient if you use the correct CSS code.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But it is sufficient if you use the correct CSS code.

Apparently not on Moon+ (or other readers) which ignore publisher's css completely...

I'm pretty sure that means it'll ignore padding as well as margins