Aura E2 Drop cap weirdness.

theducks · 12-01-2019, 01:16 PM

If the first line with a (basically a 2em) dropcap lands at the bottom of the screen, The CAP is split (yes, top half, bottom half) between screens, with the next line.

Anyplace else, Perfect.

Is this a bug? Is there a CSS workaround (for Personal use only)?
( I have updated the FW about a month ago)

JSWolf · 12-01-2019, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

If the first line with a (basically a 2em) dropcap lands at the bottom of the screen, The CAP is split (yes, top half, bottom half) between screens, with the next line.

Anyplace else, Perfect.

Is this a bug? Is there a CSS workaround (for Personal use only)?
( I have updated the FW about a month ago)

There is a very simple workaround. Read all eBooks with a dropcap as ePub as the typesetting for KePub is buggy and that's why you have the issue with the line being split.

davidfor · 12-01-2019, 06:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

If the first line with a (basically a 2em) dropcap lands at the bottom of the screen, The CAP is split (yes, top half, bottom half) between screens, with the next line.

Anyplace else, Perfect.

Is this a bug? Is there a CSS workaround (for Personal use only)?
( I have updated the FW about a month ago)

There are some issues where the ends of the descenders for the last line on the screen appear on the next screen, or the tops of the ascenders of the first line appear at the bottom of the previous. Usually it is a particular font and line height combination. I would guess this is sort of related. There are multiple fonts, sizes and line heights involved, so the likelihood of getting this wrong is pretty high. My guess would be that the paragraph line height and font size is used to work out if the line will fit on the screen and they don't compensate for the size of the dropcap. I have no idea if you could fix this with the CSS, but, it wouldn't surprise me if any changes made would break the dropcap itself.

And Jon, I'd expect this to be a problem for both the epub and kepub renderer. If one doesn't suffer from it, then it probably has some other weirdness with the way this is displayed.

theducks · 12-01-2019, 06:57 PM

Thanks. Mostly just curious.
This is NOT just a descender. 1/2 of any letter , the rest of the lines appear normal.
I probably could try and set a widows: 3 for the drop paragraph

davidfor · 12-01-2019, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

Thanks. Mostly just curious.
This is NOT just a descender. 1/2 of any letter , the rest of the lines appear normal.

I know. It's just that when I realised what you were describing, this is what I thought of. And I know that it is a line height issue though also might be an issue with how the font was defined (can't prove that, but have my suspicions). And I think the issue here is using the wrong line height to calculate the space needed.

Quote:

I probably could try and set a widows: 3 for the drop paragraph

That sounds like a nice simple solution. But, it will only work for epubs. I'm pretty sure kepubs ignore the widows and orphans in CSS and always use 1.

rashkae · 12-01-2019, 08:14 PM

It took a bit of effort to recreate, but Jon is correct in this case. The epub reader will correctly move the whole block of text down when 1 character is oversized,,, the Kepub does not, but behaves just as described, the larger letter can be split 50/50.

It's an interesting observation... of course, actually every seeing this will be pretty rare. If you have a book doing this on every chapter,,, (and you don't just want to suffer through epub.)... you can adjust font size / line height so the Dropcap doesn't land right at the end of the page. If every chapter is like this, maybe clean up all the wasted space at the top? If there is actual content in that space, (probably graphic.), maybe split the page/file there so the dropcap starts at the top of next page.

theducks · 12-01-2019, 08:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rashkae

It took a bit of effort to recreate, but Jon is correct in this case. The epub reader will correctly move the whole block of text down when 1 character is oversized,,, the Kepub does not, but behaves just as described, the larger letter can be split 50/50.

It's an interesting observation... of course, actually every seeing this will be pretty rare. If you have a book doing this on every chapter,,, (and you don't just want to suffer through epub.)... you can adjust font size / line height so the Dropcap doesn't land right at the end of the page. If every chapter is like this, maybe clean up all the wasted space at the top? If there is actual content in that space, (probably graphic.), maybe split the page/file there so the dropcap starts at the top of next page.

It only happened in a few places. The book also uses DC's after a scene break.
It is just the breaks that it happens

enuddleyarbl · 08-10-2021, 10:45 PM

I came here to ask about the same thing with a kepub I'm currently reading. Thanks. Of course, the other issue I'm seeing with drop caps is that I'm not seeing them at all. In general, the space for the drop cap is just blank unless it it starts near the bottom of the page (where it'll be split across the page break). Any pointers on where to look to try to figure out how I'm messing something up?

EDIT: the missing drop cap seems to be related to the font size I'm reading the kepub with. If I open the font menu while reading on my Forma and hit the minus sign on the font size 6 times, the drop cap appears (it partially appears at 5 taps). Increasing the font size makes it disappear again.

Quoth · 08-11-2021, 07:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is a very simple workaround. Read all eBooks with a dropcap as ePub as the typesetting for KePub is buggy and that's why you have the issue with the line being split.

Or get rid of Drop caps completely via Calibre. They only 100% work on paper and even there reduce readability. It's publisher ego thing resurrected in the Victorian era.

Some people like them, but I don't, especially decorated ones, even on paper.

But I don't even test our ebooks with kepub as it's proprietary and incorrect layout, though I do test KF7 & KF8 (as Amazon has 90% of English ebooks, but I object to KFX.) I know it has some advantages, but that's an artificial Kobo decision as they could add image zoom to epub. I stopped using it and reloaded all the ebooks that had been automatically changed to kepub.

enuddleyarbl · 08-11-2021, 10:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

Or get rid of Drop caps completely via Calibre....

I was thinking of doing that, but I can't find anything on how. Could you point me in the right direction?

ZodWallop · 08-11-2021, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

...I don't even test our ebooks with kepub as it's proprietary and incorrect layout... I know it has some advantages, but that's an artificial Kobo decision as they could add image zoom to epub...

I like the 'one screen = one page' in the footer and that the page count increases/decreases based on font size* If Kobo could add that to epub, I'd do away with kepub.

*No, I'm not trying to resurrect the old 'true page count' chestnut.

hobnail · 08-11-2021, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaveLessnau

I was thinking of doing that, but I can't find anything on how. Could you point me in the right direction?

The way I do it is by editing the epub. If you look at the first sentence you'll typically see a span around the first letter, and sometimes another one around the first few words to make them small caps. The first span has a class, often with an obvious name; just do a global search and replace on it (including all of the html files) to make them go away, so that the span has no class. So 'span class="firstletter"' becomes simply 'span' (with the angle brackets of course).

JSWolf · 08-11-2021, 02:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I like the 'one screen = one page' in the footer and that the page count increases/decreases based on font size* If Kobo could add that to epub, I'd do away with kepub.

*No, I'm not trying to resurrect the old 'true page count' chestnut.

Sorry, but one screen = one page does not work with KePub. It's been buggy for some time now.

davidfor · 08-11-2021, 09:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sorry, but one screen = one page does not work with KePub. It's been buggy for some time now.

But, it is close enough that most people do not notice the occasional page number repeats. But, seriously, is this now your argument for not using kepubs?

JSWolf · 08-12-2021, 05:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

But, it is close enough that most people do not notice the occasional page number repeats. But, seriously, is this now your argument for not using kepubs?

It's a correction for incorrect information.

12-01-2019, 01:16 PM	#1
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 30,891 Karma: 60358908 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Drop cap weirdness. If the first line with a (basically a 2em) dropcap lands at the bottom of the screen, The CAP is split (yes, top half, bottom half) between screens, with the next line. Anyplace else, Perfect. Is this a bug? Is there a CSS workaround (for Personal use only)? ( I have updated the FW about a month ago)

08-10-2021, 10:45 PM	#8
enuddleyarbl Guru Posts: 769 Karma: 1537886 Join Date: Sep 2013 Device: Kobo Forma	I came here to ask about the same thing with a kepub I'm currently reading. Thanks. Of course, the other issue I'm seeing with drop caps is that I'm not seeing them at all. In general, the space for the drop cap is just blank unless it it starts near the bottom of the page (where it'll be split across the page break). Any pointers on where to look to try to figure out how I'm messing something up? EDIT: the missing drop cap seems to be related to the font size I'm reading the kepub with. If I open the font menu while reading on my Forma and hit the minus sign on the font size 6 times, the drop cap appears (it partially appears at 5 taps). Increasing the font size makes it disappear again. Last edited by enuddleyarbl; 08-10-2021 at 10:52 PM.

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12-01-2019, 06:57 PM	#4
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 30,891 Karma: 60358908 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Thanks. Mostly just curious. This is NOT just a descender. 1/2 of any letter , the rest of the lines appear normal. I probably could try and set a widows: 3 for the drop paragraph

12-01-2019, 08:14 PM	#6
rashkae Wizard Posts: 1,268 Karma: 5935030 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Ontario, Canada Device: Kobo Aura HD	It took a bit of effort to recreate, but Jon is correct in this case. The epub reader will correctly move the whole block of text down when 1 character is oversized,,, the Kepub does not, but behaves just as described, the larger letter can be split 50/50. It's an interesting observation... of course, actually every seeing this will be pretty rare. If you have a book doing this on every chapter,,, (and you don't just want to suffer through epub.)... you can adjust font size / line height so the Dropcap doesn't land right at the end of the page. If every chapter is like this, maybe clean up all the wasted space at the top? If there is actual content in that space, (probably graphic.), maybe split the page/file there so the dropcap starts at the top of next page.