Drop Caps Help?

[DNSB]

Other than both books being terrible examples of coding, Shadows of Ecstasy has the coding for a drop cap while War in Heaven does not. Oddly the version of War in Heaven in the epub secion of MobileRead's library does have dropcaps and used header tags for the chapter headers.

In Shadows of Ecstasy, the calibre1 and calibre2 classes set font size to 1.125em and 1.5em respectively while in War in Heaven, the only style applied to the first paragraph sets the top and bottom margin to 1em.

I would also suggest changing the use of pt (an absolute unit) in War in Heaven to a relative unit (em for example).

[RbnJrg]

I don't see any drop cap in Shadows of Ecstasy; I only see raised caps; it's not the same thing. By the way, the xhtml code employed is not the best.
You have raised caps in Shadows because the first letter has the style "calibre1":

.calibre1 {
    font-size: 1.5em;
    line-height: 1.2
}

while in "War in Heaven" you have nothing. So, in "War in Heaven", in your stylesheet.css, write at the end the following:

.calibre6 {
    font-size: 1.5em;
    line-height: 1.2
}

and in your .xhtml files, enclose the first letter of the first paragraph of the chapter with <span class="calibre6">YOUR LETTER</span>.

For example, in Chapter One you should have the following:

<p class="calibre2"><span class="calibre6">T</span>he telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no one in the room but the corpse.</p>

[RMOP]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Other than both books being terrible examples of coding, Shadows of Ecstasy has the coding for a drop cap while War in Heaven does not. Oddly the version of War in Heaven in the epub secion of MobileRead's library does have dropcaps and used header tags for the chapter headers.

In Shadows of Ecstasy, the calibre1 and calibre2 classes set font size to 1.125em and 1.5em respectively while in War in Heaven, the only style applied to the first paragraph sets the top and bottom margin to 1em.

I would also suggest changing the use of pt (an absolute unit) in War in Heaven to a relative unit (em for example).

Thanks. I can't take the blame for the coding of War in Heaven! It is pretty much as I found it. I focused on removing scanning artifacts and adding footnotes and annotations. Similarly, the "Raised Caps" were already in the ePub version of Shadows of Ecstasy. Again, my efforts were to clean up the text and add notes. The input here will get me what I need. Many thanks.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

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

It's testable.

it's ALSO a question of taste.

[RMOP]

Thanks all. This is a very tolerant forum, puting up with fools, if not gladly, at least patiently. I managed to cobble things together so that the book looks much better. At my age and stage, I don't intend to do many more eBooks, so don't expect or intend to master the skills necessary to do this like one really should. But, I'm pleased w what I've got.

[DNSB]

Great to hear that you are happy with your results. For my uses, since I don't like dropcaps, I remove them. For books I am formatting for others or for publication, I tend to go for the looks good over as many devices as possible coding. Even with using all the tricks I've found over the years, you can't please all the people all the time but you can reduce the complaints to a tolerable amount.

[RMOP]

Well, LOL, since I was evidently in my ignorance referring to Raised Caps, and not Drop Caps at all, that might be a different matter. But, what I have shows nicely across all platforms to date. Thanks again.

[RMOP]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

... By the way, the xhtml code employed is not the best...

No kidding. I've taking a look under the hood, and find LOTS of "dead code" that seems entirely extraneous. I mean literally hundreds of snippets which enclose no text, or which appear to have no visible impact upon the text, as far as appearance is concerned. No idea where it came from, which is one of the drawbacks of taking someone else's ePub book and trying to adapt it. Rather like taking over cooking something w/o knowing what recipe and ingredients proceded one's own involvement.

So, is there a way to clean up such an ePub document w/o going through it line-by-line? I've got things looking pretty much the way I want, and the footnotes were all added individually and were "roll your own," so to speak, and I didn't have the skills or tools to do otherwise. I need to preserve those obviously. But, there is something inherently unsatisfying w seeing all of that mess beneath the otherwise nicely displayed text.

Suggestions? It may be best just left along. One can always make things worse...

Many thanks, again, to all.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by RMOP

Well, LOL, since I was evidently in my ignorance referring to Raised Caps, and not Drop Caps at all, that might be a different matter. But, what I have shows nicely across all platforms to date. Thanks again.

On a Kindle, raised caps do not work. They make the line stick up vs the other lines and there's nothing you can do to fix it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by RMOP

No kidding. I've taking a look under the hood, and find LOTS of "dead code" that seems entirely extraneous. I mean literally hundreds of snippets which enclose no text, or which appear to have no visible impact upon the text, as far as appearance is concerned. No idea where it came from, which is one of the drawbacks of taking someone else's ePub book and trying to adapt it. Rather like taking over cooking something w/o knowing what recipe and ingredients proceded one's own involvement.

So, is there a way to clean up such an ePub document w/o going through it line-by-line? I've got things looking pretty much the way I want, and the footnotes were all added individually and were "roll your own," so to speak, and I didn't have the skills or tools to do otherwise. I need to preserve those obviously. But, there is something inherently unsatisfying w seeing all of that mess beneath the otherwise nicely displayed text.

Suggestions? It may be best just left along. One can always make things worse...

Many thanks, again, to all.

If you are using the calibre editor, go to Tools menu > Remove unused CSS rules. That way you'll remove all classes in CSS and HTML that are not being used. That can make it a lot easier to clean things up from there.

[RMOP]

Many thanks. I'll give that a try. Separately, as far as the Raised Caps (not Drop Caps, to which I mistakenly them) go, they look OK to ME on MY Kindle and Kindle Reader. Screen capture from my PC Kindle Reader attached. Maybe I just have poor taste...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by RMOP

Many thanks. I'll give that a try. Separately, as far as the Raised Caps (not Drop Caps, to which I mistakenly them) go, they look OK to ME on MY Kindle and Kindle Reader. Screen capture from my PC Kindle Reader attached. Maybe I just have poor taste...

If you notice, the first line has more space between it and the second line then the second line and the third line. Also, the larger the raised letter, the worse it looks.

[RMOP]

Poor aesthetic sense. It didn't bother me. Now I'll try not to let it do so, LOL!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by RMOP

Poor aesthetic sense. It didn't bother me. Now I'll try not to let it do so, LOL!

The old saying will always be true. Once seen, you can never unsee it.

[Slevin#7]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you notice, the first line has more space between it and the second line then the second line and the third line. Also, the larger the raised letter, the worse it looks.

That is because of the line-height which is calculated for the current font-size, which means that the greater font of the raised cap will win to set the line-height prior to the normal text. You could try to set line-height to 1, but not all reader will accept custom line-heights.