View/use consistent actual font size - Page 2

Tawn · 06-20-2022, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

Not quite right. The slider does not override the CSS set values, instead it is modifying them. That is a specific setting does not set a fixed font size but rather supplies a multiplier for the ebook's defined font size.

So it's equivalent to a browser's Zoom setting: i.e. 25 would be equivalent to 25% zoom. Do kePubs alter this setting or just specify something markedly different in their own css? Perhaps, like a browser, the UI should have a button to return to default zoom (100%).

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

So if the font size slider is set to 25 (you can see those numbers in the Kobo eReader.conf file in the .kobo/Kobo directory under the [Reading] header as the ReadingFontSize value) and the ebook CSS is set to 1em/100%, the effective font size would be 25. If the ebook CSS sets 0.875em, the effective font size would be 21.875.

Ahh, so it is visible somewhere. If it gets way off, is it ok to just edit that file back to the preferred zoom (obviously carefully and with no book open) ? The multiple screen flashes (after clicking +/- before the resized text appears) gets annoying if you need to do several readjustments before getting to the preferred size. (I suspect it got off when looking at a few previews that were displaying gigantic text.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

And yes, there are a lot of websites and ebooks that feel other default values are sensible.

IMO displaying the bulk of text at the user's preferred size is the only sensible way. But I'm not here to debate that. We should be able to override the author's setting; that's what user stylesheets and the !important property are for.

Quoth · 06-20-2022, 11:07 AM

The numeric value only applies the same size to matching CSS, and varies in effect between epub and kepub. The ebook CSS body text surprisingly isn't always 1 em (=12pt). So the numeric value would just be clutter. Move slider and tap + or - till it looks right if it looks wrong. Only needs done once for a book. With paper you are stuck with whatever the publisher decided.

Also the same 1 em (=12 pt) is a different size for different fonts! Getting say some Sans text in the body to look the same size as the main Serif text is challenging for the paper or ebook designer/format editing person.

JSWolf · 06-20-2022, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tawn

IMO displaying the bulk of text at the user's preferred size is the only sensible way. But I'm not here to debate that. We should be able to override the author's setting; that's what user stylesheets and the !important property are for.

Thing is, most eBooks that I've seen the code for use <p> for chapter headers. So how would you suggest you override the font size for <p> if you want to override for the body text but you are also overriding the header text size. It doesn't work well for an override.

Barty · 06-20-2022, 11:50 AM

A subject near and dear to my heart! My eyes aren't good so I have a very particular set of preferences, preferences which I have acquired over a very long career. I like to adjust the font size, <body> and <p> margins, and line spacing so I get exactly X lines of text on the screen, each and every time.

Before, I had to open the epub in calibre and do some editing. That got old. Finally, I've managed to do this with my custom build of Plato. Added a CSS tweak feature whereby I can long press on the main text and apply a canned CSS style to it. Boom! 20 lines of text on my Libra 2. No more fiddling around.

Shgmeless plug >>> https://github.com/thataboy/plato/bl.../CSS_TWEAKS.md

This is just way too nerdy to ever see the day of light in any mainstream product. Heck, it's probably way too nerdy to make it to Plato proper. But yeah I think that's what it takes to achieve consistency, because I don't think you can expect publishers to standardize their formatting. They don't do it for print books (nor should they), There's an argument to be made for ebooks, but we who care are a very small minority.

hobnail · 06-20-2022, 12:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Thing is, most eBooks that I've seen the code for use <p> for chapter headers. So how would you suggest you override the font size for <p> if you want to override for the body text but you are also overriding the header text size. It doesn't work well for an override.

Very true. But chapter titles/headers are only 1 line so I've learned to not worry about it. For me it's the body text that I want to read. Someone could delete all the chapter titles and I wouldn't cry.

Quoth · 06-20-2022, 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Thing is, most eBooks that I've seen the code for use <p> for chapter headers. So how would you suggest you override the font size for <p> if you want to override for the body text but you are also overriding the header text size. It doesn't work well for an override.

I got an ebook from Amazon by a big publisher and it had NO <p> or <hn> tags at all! Every paragraph and heading was a <div> with a suitable CSS.
So I used Calibre Editor with "Plugins -> Edit Span and Div" to replace preserving class to either <h2 class="cs"> or <p class="bs"> and then global edit to replace the first <p class="bs"> after an </h2> with <p class="no-indent">, created by copying bs and changing text-indent: 0

I only opened it for edit because the line-height was fixed and stupid, so I simply deleted ALL line-height settings in the style file (CSS classes).

My automatically converted by Calibre from docx exported by Save As from Libra Office Writer are consistently better than ebooks by big publishers. I do have to edit css classes for any images (I don't usually have many) to either an absolute pixels high or a percent width depend what they are for as the Styles for images don't map well. All the text paragraph styles / headings etc map perfectly to CSS classes.

DNSB · 06-20-2022, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

My automatically converted by Calibre from docx exported by Save As from Libra Office Writer are consistently better than ebooks by big publishers. I do have to edit css classes for any images (I don't usually have many) to either an absolute pixels high or a percent width depend what they are for as the Styles for images don't map well. All the text paragraph styles / headings etc map perfectly to CSS classes.

Which is great but at times, trying to convince a wannabe author that writing their book in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer can work very well and is easier than trying to learn many epub editors but you need to spend some time learning about and using styles makes banging your head against a brick wall seem a pleasant alternative.

One author reently sent me a .docx file where they hit a return at the end of every line and did little else other marking a few words as italic. When I sent back the result of sucking the document into Sigil using the docx plugin and also doing a calibre docx to epub conversion, they were rather unhappy. My suggestion that they talk to the person who referred them to me and discuss using styles which the referring author has gotten very good at using drifted off into a "they will distract me from writing and it's your job to fix up the book" rant.

JSWolf · 06-20-2022, 04:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

I got an ebook from Amazon by a big publisher and it had NO <p> or <hn> tags at all! Every paragraph and heading was a <div> with a suitable CSS.
So I used Calibre Editor with "Plugins -> Edit Span and Div" to replace preserving class to either <h2 class="cs"> or <p class="bs"> and then global edit to replace the first <p class="bs"> after an </h2> with <p class="no-indent">, created by copying bs and changing text-indent: 0

I only opened it for edit because the line-height was fixed and stupid, so I simply deleted ALL line-height settings in the style file (CSS classes).

My automatically converted by Calibre from docx exported by Save As from Libra Office Writer are consistently better than ebooks by big publishers. I do have to edit css classes for any images (I don't usually have many) to either an absolute pixels high or a percent width depend what they are for as the Styles for images don't map well. All the text paragraph styles / headings etc map perfectly to CSS classes.

If I find <div> instead of <p>, I will fix it to be <p>. I also remove all line height and the L/R margins as well as font size for the main text and offset text. I don't like when offset text is made to be smaller. There's no need for that. I also remove mode embedded fonts. And some eBooks have a font-family specifying a font even though there are no embedded fonts.

There are a lot of mistakes made in eBooks and there can be hundreds of unused CSS. Sometimes when you remove unused CSS, you end up with a small CSS. It's crazy how poorly made most eBooks are.

Deobulakenyo · 06-20-2022, 07:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

Which is great but at times, trying to convince a wannabe author that writing their book in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer can work very well and is easier than trying to learn many epub editors but you need to spend some time learning about and using styles makes banging your head against a brick wall seem a pleasant alternative.

One author reently sent me a .docx file where they hit a return at the end of every line and did little else other marking a few words as italic. When I sent back the result of sucking the document into Sigil using the docx plugin and also doing a calibre docx to epub conversion, they were rather unhappy. My suggestion that they talk to the person who referred them to me and discuss using styles which the referring author has gotten very good at using drifted off into a "they will distract me from writing and it's your job to fix up the book" rant.

I wish a few youtubers would post tut videos on editing ebooks.

graycyn · 06-20-2022, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

The numeric value only applies the same size to matching CSS, and varies in effect between epub and kepub. The ebook CSS body text surprisingly isn't always 1 em (=12pt). So the numeric value would just be clutter. Move slider and tap + or - till it looks right if it looks wrong. Only needs done once for a book. With paper you are stuck with whatever the publisher decided.

Only needs once for YOU per book, but definitely not once per book for ME! I'm near-sighted, I have, depending on how my eyes feel, a pretty good range where I can read text, it's just that super tiny isn't comfy. I suffer from severe dry eye, and how my eyes feel can vary considerably.

I use a slightly larger than normal font during the day, but that goes up at night when my eyes are tired. And up further still for dark mode. I need double or triple the size I use during the day with dark mode!

So it's *not* once per book, it is MULTIPLE TIMES per book that I have to adjust font! And THAT is the the reason I'd like a number to ballpark it. It's irritating when I'm tapping some 8 times or so to get things large enough for dark mode reading, then have to do it all over again in the morning when daylight comes and my eyes are fresh!

And there's adjustments during the day as well, depending on whether I'm holding the reader or have it further away on a stand or resting it on a shopping cart while I wait in line at checkout.

Font size adjustment is probably the one and only thing I like better on Kindle than I do on Kobo! It's just SO much quicker to be able to set a font size that gets me back into reading on Kindle. I'm at Kindle 5 or 6 in the early morning when my eyes are fresh, but up to 9 or sometimes even 10 at night.

I'm NOT suggesting Kobo ditch their wide range of sizing, but something to make it a LITTLE easier to hit close to where I want would be nice. That's all.

To those who don't have any eye issues and can just set and forget font size, be thankful!

graycyn · 06-20-2022, 08:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There are a lot of mistakes made in eBooks and there can be hundreds of unused CSS. Sometimes when you remove unused CSS, you end up with a small CSS. It's crazy how poorly made most eBooks are.

I've looked at a bunch of my purchased books in Calibre editor or Sigil; what kills me is that a fair few of them, even from the BIG publishers, don't pass ePubCheck!

You'd think that would be a minimum standard for SELLING an epub ...

And you are SO correct that they usually leave a crap ton of unused CSS. But I read too many books to edit them all. At 60+ I might be willing to turn a favorite paper book into digital for my personal use, but I'm danged if I'm going to PAY for a book and THEN have to spend time to edit it. Unless there is something that my eyes just can't cope with, like a spindly embedded font. Fortunately those are rare.

graycyn · 06-20-2022, 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

For the light it is different. I change it frequently and it basically depend on the lighting conditions for where I am reading.

Then make sure you tell them. This is not an official Kobo support forum. There are no Kobo people here in any official way. You should assume that they will not see anything posted here.

I change font size nearly as frequently as the lighting!

Like if I were to read right now, after working some on my computer for the past hour, I'd want a larger font than I would when I started reading this AM.

I have actually been thinking about contacting Kobo, to mention things like this and how I'd love to see ligatures enabled in their Kepub format. And to mention how nice it would be to have a font slider on the right hand side of the screen.

They are doing many good things, but some could be better.

I recently did some ebook testing of things like HTML fraction entities, prime and double prime entities, etc..., but the Kobo factory fonts are QUITE variable in support of such! Yet both Apple and Kindle supported everything with every single one of their built in fonts. Seems an area that could use work.

There was something else, but I'm forgetting now. Perils of age. Hopefully I can remember what, I thought it might be a nice new feature they could possibly build in to a premium reader. Something I read about, hopefully I bookmarked it and can find it again.

davidfor · 06-20-2022, 11:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by graycyn

I change font size nearly as frequently as the lighting!

Like if I were to read right now, after working some on my computer for the past hour, I'd want a larger font than I would when I started reading this AM.

Font changing is just not something I need to do often. The main reason is swapping between kepubs and epubs. But, honestly, the main reason for fiddling with fonts might actually be because of discussions here making me test something.

Quote:

I have actually been thinking about contacting Kobo, to mention things like this and how I'd love to see ligatures enabled in their Kepub format. And to mention how nice it would be to have a font slider on the right hand side of the screen.

Do it. Kobo can't know what people want unless you tell them. They do listen and there are plenty of changes that I know have been made because of the feedback (at least one had me reacting with a "who was the idiot who wanted that?") The font size change on the right edge does make sense to me, but, not something I would use. Or maybe I would when it was so easy to use. It is probably something they have considered. Feedback from external parties could push it up the priorities.

davidfor · 06-20-2022, 11:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tawn

So it's equivalent to a browser's Zoom setting: i.e. 25 would be equivalent to 25% zoom. Do kePubs alter this setting or just specify something markedly different in their own css? Perhaps, like a browser, the UI should have a button to return to default zoom (100%).

Yes, it is effectively a zoom setting. Adding a default button sort of makes sense, but, what defaults do they use? The ones that come with the device are probably no good. I think it would just be wasted UI space. Personally, I find it weird that you don't know where in the slider you need to tap to get the setting to what you need. Or at least roughly what you want.

Quote:

Ahh, so it is visible somewhere. If it gets way off, is it ok to just edit that file back to the preferred zoom (obviously carefully and with no book open) ?

Yes you can edit the file. But, it isn't exactly practical. You need to connect the device to a PC and edit it. Or use telnet to get into the device. Add that once you change the settings for a book, they are stored in the database against the book. That means if you don't like the font size you selected for a book, you would need to update the database.

There is a way to do this from calibre. My Kobo Utilities plugin has a function to set, or clear, the font settings for each book, whether they have been set or not.

Quote:

The multiple screen flashes (after clicking +/- before the resized text appears) gets annoying if you need to do several readjustments before getting to the preferred size. (I suspect it got off when looking at a few previews that were displaying gigantic text.)

I don't see any flashes when adjusting the font size or other font settings on either my Sage or Clara HD. The screen is update cleanly. And I don't remember there being any on other devices. If I do a lot of fiddling, I would probably force a refresh when I finished to get rid of any ghosting, but that's about it.

Quote:

IMO displaying the bulk of text at the user's preferred size is the only sensible way. But I'm not here to debate that. We should be able to override the author's setting; that's what user stylesheets and the !important property are for.

That's a completely different argument that has been had here plenty of times. Some love the apps/devices that ignore the books stylesheet, others think they are the spawn of the devil. U think KOReader or Plato can do this. It sounds like one of those would be better for you.

Tawn · 06-21-2022, 12:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

I don't see any flashes when adjusting the font size or other font settings on either my Sage or Clara HD. The screen is update cleanly. And I don't remember there being any on other devices. If I do a lot of fiddling, I would probably force a refresh when I finished to get rid of any ghosting, but that's about it.

Thanks for all the info.

I was getting about 3 flashes before the new size appeared. I just tested again and now it does indeed update cleanly. There was an update to 4.33 since the previous behavior. No idea if that was related or if something was just being wonky and the power off/on fixed it. That makes it much less annoying.

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06-20-2022, 11:07 AM	#17
Quoth Still reading Posts: 14,045 Karma: 105092227 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	The numeric value only applies the same size to matching CSS, and varies in effect between epub and kepub. The ebook CSS body text surprisingly isn't always 1 em (=12pt). So the numeric value would just be clutter. Move slider and tap + or - till it looks right if it looks wrong. Only needs done once for a book. With paper you are stuck with whatever the publisher decided. Also the same 1 em (=12 pt) is a different size for different fonts! Getting say some Sans text in the body to look the same size as the main Serif text is challenging for the paper or ebook designer/format editing person.

06-20-2022, 11:50 AM	#19
Barty doofus Posts: 2,549 Karma: 13089041 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kindle Voyage	A subject near and dear to my heart! My eyes aren't good so I have a very particular set of preferences, preferences which I have acquired over a very long career. I like to adjust the font size, <body> and <p> margins, and line spacing so I get exactly X lines of text on the screen, each and every time. Before, I had to open the epub in calibre and do some editing. That got old. Finally, I've managed to do this with my custom build of Plato. Added a CSS tweak feature whereby I can long press on the main text and apply a canned CSS style to it. Boom! 20 lines of text on my Libra 2. No more fiddling around. Shgmeless plug >>> https://github.com/thataboy/plato/bl.../CSS_TWEAKS.md This is just way too nerdy to ever see the day of light in any mainstream product. Heck, it's probably way too nerdy to make it to Plato proper. But yeah I think that's what it takes to achieve consistency, because I don't think you can expect publishers to standardize their formatting. They don't do it for print books (nor should they), There's an argument to be made for ebooks, but we who care are a very small minority.