Drop Caps Help?

[RMOP]

I've carefully corrected and formatted a series of seven public domain novels. I used Drop Caps at the beginning of each chapter, and am pleased w the result. EXCEPT for ONE of the novels, for which I cannot replicate the Drop Caps formatting. Not sure what I'm missing. I'm a casual and infrequent user of Calibre for such tasks, don't intend to learn new software for just solving this isolated problem, so wonder if anyone is willing to take at look at two of these books (one correctly done, the other the anomaly). I'm confident that the problem is staring me in the face, but trying to copy the headers from the chapter of the correcly formatted book to the problem child hasn't worked. Anyone? I can send the two books via PM or email. Many thanks.

[pdurrant]

Since they're public domain, feel free to just upload them here as attachments.

BTW, drop caps are notoriously hard to get right. The software displaying the ePub just has to use a different line height (perhaps by user setting) and they won't look very pretty any more.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by RMOP

I've carefully corrected and formatted a series of seven public domain novels. I used Drop Caps at the beginning of each chapter, and am pleased w the result. EXCEPT for ONE of the novels, for which I cannot replicate the Drop Caps formatting. Not sure what I'm missing. I'm a casual and infrequent user of Calibre for such tasks, don't intend to learn new software for just solving this isolated problem, so wonder if anyone is willing to take at look at two of these books (one correctly done, the other the anomaly). I'm confident that the problem is staring me in the face, but trying to copy the headers from the chapter of the correcly formatted book to the problem child hasn't worked. Anyone? I can send the two books via PM or email. Many thanks.

Post the two ebooks here and we'll be able to help you better.

[JSWolf]

The problem with dropcaps is they only really look good with the same font and same setting as whoever did the CSS.

[retiredbiker]

When I started editing ebooks I collected and played with maybe a dozen css templates for "the best way to do drop caps". Spent hours on it. What worked on Kindle messed up on Kobo. What worked on one Android app didn't on three others. On and on. The final result was: don't use drop caps.

[DNSB]

I find myself agreeing with @retiredbiker. I did much the same trying various ways to make dropcaps that would look good over a variety of devices, ling spacing, fonts, font sizes, etc. After too many hours of experimentation, I ended up with the same conclusion about not using dropcaps being the best way to use dropcaps.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by retiredbiker

When I started editing ebooks I collected and played with maybe a dozen css templates for "the best way to do drop caps". Spent hours on it. What worked on Kindle messed up on Kobo. What worked on one Android app didn't on three others. On and on. The final result was: don't use drop caps.

When I edit an eBook, I'll remove dropcaps and large first letter as they are really annoying.

[Turtle91]

Other than what one person just doesn’t like as visually unappealing… most of these points are assuming that you have one, and only one, book file for ALL the different devices/apps out there….

It is just as simple to have a different css file for each market you wish to serve. Put the right css in the file you submit to kindle, put a different css file in one meant to serve kobo, yadda yadda. You can sometimes even include a JS that will link the correct css at runtime to serve those ePub3 devices/apps.

I completely agree that it is difficult to make one ring ePub to rule them all, but it is getting easier every day to compensate. Don’t give up trying!

FWIW - Personally, I just use ::first-letter and ::first-line. I get them to look good to me and provide for a basic fallback for those older devices that can’t understand current coding. It isn’t as pretty for those types, but those with newer devices can experience the better styling. I don’t punish those with newer devices by forcing them to the capabilities of the old devices.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Other than what one person just doesn’t like as visually unappealing… most of these points are assuming that you have one, and only one, book file for ALL the different devices/apps out there….

It is just as simple to have a different css file for each market you wish to serve. Put the right css in the file you submit to kindle, put a different css file in one meant to serve kobo, yadda yadda. You can sometimes even include a JS that will link the correct css at runtime to serve those ePub3 devices/apps.

I completely agree that it is difficult to make one ring ePub to rule them all, but it is getting easier every day to compensate. Don’t give up trying!

FWIW - Personally, I just use ::first-letter and ::first-line. I get them to look good to me and provide for a basic fallback for those older devices that can’t understand current coding. It isn’t as pretty for those types, but those with newer devices can experience the better styling. I don’t punish those with newer devices by forcing them to the capabilities of the old devices.

Lets say you have a ePub for Kobo and you get you dropcaps to look perfect on your Kobo. What's to say it will look perfect on my Kobo with a different fint and different line height? That's the problem. You cannot make sure a dropcap works in all situations even if you have a different CSS as you've suggested.

So you deliver an ePub for Kobo and I buy from eBooks.com. How can you make sure that the ePub from eBooks.com looks good on my Kobo or someone else's Pocketbook? You can't. So why bother when it doesn't work?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by retiredbiker

When I started editing ebooks I collected and played with maybe a dozen css templates for "the best way to do drop caps". Spent hours on it. What worked on Kindle messed up on Kobo. What worked on one Android app didn't on three others. On and on. The final result was: don't use drop caps.

Yes. They also reduce readability even when they work.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Lets say you have a ePub for Kobo and you get you dropcaps to look perfect on your Kobo. What's to say it will look perfect on my Kobo with a different fint and different line height? That's the problem. You cannot make sure a dropcap works in all situations even if you have a different CSS as you've suggested.

So you deliver an ePub for Kobo and I buy from eBooks.com. How can you make sure that the ePub from eBooks.com looks good on my Kobo or someone else's Pocketbook? You can't. So why bother when it doesn't work?

Well, in part you have right and in part don't. It's true that the dropcap is affected by the font and line-height. But you omit the power of JS. On epub3 you can detect changes in fonts, font-sizes and line-heights AND ACCORDING TO THAT, to modify the style that gives format the drop cap, so it looks fine. Of course, you can do that on epub3 (I did it) not under epub2 and in the present case, is not possible to have a fallback code for all situations with epub2. However, even under epub3, after the user made a change in the font, the JS code produces "a blink" in the screen to adjust the drop caps in the whole epub that I don't like. And still I couldn't find a way to supress (or to hide) the blink. If the blink is not important for you, then under epub3 is possible to have perfect drop caps (Kobo for Android display very well drop caps even without JS, with any font size).

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Yes. They also reduce readability even when they work.

That’s a matter of taste don’t you think??

Jon - I’m not going to waste my time repeating the same explanation that you obviously haven’t read before. If you truly want to learn how, and not just argue for the sake of argument, I would refer you to all the other threads where this subject has come up. Focus on concepts like pseudo-selectors, embedded fonts, JavaScript, @media, @supports, and fallback coding…

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

That’s a matter of taste don’t you think??

Jon - I’m not going to waste my time repeating the same explanation that you obviously haven’t read before. If you truly want to learn how, and not just argue for the sake of argument, I would refer you to all the other threads where this subject has come up. Focus on concepts like pseudo-selectors, embedded fonts, JavaScript, @media, @supports, and fallback coding…

They don't always work. You know this. You need a universal solution that works in most cases. And there isn't such.

[RMOP]

Well, these specific books use the Drop Caps ONLY for the Chapter Titles and the first LETTER of the first LINE of the first PARAGRAPH of each chapter. I read these books almost exclusively on my Kindle, having first sent them TO Kindle for whatever conversion they are presently imposing. No issues there, except for the LACK of the Drop Caps on a single volume. I've tried to match the original formatting in the hard copies, and seeing the same Drop Caps on my readers as I see in the hard copies is, somehow, rather satisfying. I've read and re-read these books so many times that I've come to appreciate that familiarity across platforms more than really makes sense. But, there it is. In any event, the ePub looks great on both my Sony Reader and, upon conversion, on my Kindle and software Kindle Readers on both phone and tablet. So, I'm happy with my very limited implementation of Drop Caps.

[RMOP]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Since they're public domain, feel free to just upload them here as attachments.

Here they are. The same titles are found in the MobiRead library, BTW, but mine are footnoted and annotated.

Shadows of Ecstasy displays the Drop Caps as desired.
War in Heaven does NOT, and there should be no residual from my failed attempts to add them to this book.

Any guidance will be appreciated. It's only this single book that, for some reason, has given be trouble. Probably as it was my FIRST effort at creating an ePub book. Many thanks.