Formatting chapter/title pages with offset blocks of text

[ElMiko]

@Quoth - I wasn't sure what you meant by "Any top padding more than a few times the heading size will fail"— in terms of what you meant by "few" and what you meant by "fail". Could you clarify?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

@Quoth - I wasn't sure what you meant by "Any top padding more than a few times the heading size will fail"— in terms of what you meant by "few" and what you meant by "fail". Could you clarify?

On small screen or larger font it will break on to separate pages.

[ElMiko]

Okay, but, since font size can theoretically be scaled infinitely, this goes to my initial question. What font size/screen size ranges are you assuming when determining your formatting parameters. What's the smallest screen at the largest font size that you're using as the idealized constraint on how you format books?

Just to give a little context here by way of example, in other threads I've asked about creating column-like formatting that will be preserved under "stressed" conditions. e.g. transcript-like text where the speaker's name is on the right and their speech is on the left. My default has long-been to use table formatting, but users like RbnJrg have also exposed me to span/float combos that will have similar effects. However, there are unavoidable combinations of font size/screen size that make it impossible to guarantee that the formatting will be effectively preserved. As you noted, that's just the nature of the reflowable beast. Therefore, an ebook producer has to ultimately make SOME assumptions about likely user settings and accept that SOME outlier cases will result in losses to formatting fidelity. The question is, therefore: What are the idealized assumptions that ebook producers are making to dermine the boundaries of what constitutes and outlier?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

I know there are some strong feelings out there about trying to simulate paperbook layouts in the context of reflowable, re-sizeable ebooks. For example, I've seen repeated calls against top margins on chapter headings or simulating text that starts "half-way" down the page, presumably because screen sizes and text sizes could potentially result in blank pages, unusual gaps between text, etc.

However...

I'm wondering how the pros here handle content that is seemingly necessary to format with various top & bottom margins and variable font sizes (see attached image). Do you assume a certain font-size (i.e. assume 1em is the size of some referent physical book, or assume a certain number of lines of text per ereader page) and screen size and hope for the best? What are these assumptions?

Keep chapter titles small meaning not too much wasted space. All that wasted space looks really ugly. Keep it simple when possible. An eBooks is not the same as a pBook. What works for a pBook may not work for an eBook. a pBook needs margins. An eBook should have no margins, no line-height, and no paragraph spaces.

[JSWolf]

Get the smallest cell phone screen you can find hat you can view your layout on. That will show you that all that excess spacing is not a good idea. Also, try large font sizes to see how it looks. You don't know how people will set things so you have to test all different things to see what works best.

[ElMiko]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Get the smallest cell phone screen you can find hat you can view your layout on. That will show you that all that excess spacing is not a good idea. Also, try large font sizes to see how it looks. You don't know how people will set things so you have to test all different things to see what works best.

Yes, all of this is consistent with what I wrote....

... and yet!

Ebook producers must make certain assumptions. You write "you don't know how people will set things so you have to test all different things" [emphasis added]. This is impossible right? And impractical. You don't test user setting assuming a 2.5" x 4" screen with font size set to 1500%, do you? I mean, if you have to test ALL different things...

But clearly that's not what's literally meant here. What's meant by it is: you have to test it against an idealized range and accept that SOME outlier cases will result in undesired rendering of your formatting. My question is/was what is that idealized range? For example, I assume that most people will have their font setting larger on a dedicated ereader than on a phone because they are usually held at different distances from one's face. This is an assumption, not an empirically tested observation, but it is part of what goes into creating the boundaries around what constitutes the aforementioned "idealized range". Likewise, I assume that for an ereader, there is a range of font sizes on an approximately 6.5" screen in which formatting will look great, a range of font sizes in which it'll look fine, a range in which it'll look crummy, and a range of at which it will become unreadable... (usually it's around 9pt-11pt, 12-15, 16-20, and greater than 20)...

---

Separately, you mentioned that "an ebook should have no margins". I'm assuming that you meant left/right margins (since 0em top/bottom would make headings run directly into the body text). But even under that assumption, how do you deal with blockquotes? Don't they need margins to offset them from the rest of the text??

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

Separately, you mentioned that "an ebook should have no margins". I'm assuming that you meant left/right margins (since 0em top/bottom would make headings run directly into the body text). But even under that assumption, how do you deal with blockquotes? Don't they need margins to offset them from the rest of the text??

I set the default body margins to 0 for all four. Blockquotes and other blocks where I want to add left/right margins, it's easy enough to do. Ditto for top/bottom for headers, etc.

What I don't want to see is the example set by several commercial ePubs where the default left/right margins are set ridiculously high—one recent example had the left/right default margins set to 2cm. On my Clara HD, that left 5cm of width left to display text.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

Separately, you mentioned that "an ebook should have no margins". I'm assuming that you meant left/right margins (since 0em top/bottom would make headings run directly into the body text). But even under that assumption, how do you deal with blockquotes? Don't they need margins to offset them from the rest of the text??

A heading and first paragraph styles in CSS would have each their own margins (and a padding-top for anything first item in a file), if not text-align: center;.

The blockquote is really an HTML 3 or something throwback. It can have a useful semantic meaning and each kind would have its own CSS and thus margins.

If it's simply to have a different set of margins and maybe font, then a <p class="myquote1"> etc may be better.

I don't use blockquotes at all, usually. The different paragraph styles in the docx give different 1:1 CSS.

[ElMiko]

@Quoth - yeah, I wasn't just referring to the html tag <blockquote> but rather more broadly to the concept of "blockquotes": blocks of quoted text within the body of a main text. (In fiction, this is often going to be something like quoted verse or epistolary text.) I was trying to understand the strongly stated proscription against all margins, as I'm struggling to see how that would work. As I said, no margins at all would result in headings running into body text (with perhaps font-size as the only distinguishing factor between them?) and ditto for blockquoted text. But maybe I'm not correctly visualizing the JSWolf's formatting implications.

[Jellby]

I usually format blockquotes with some left margin (and top/bottom, but no right). Not much, just about the same as the first-line indent, that's enough to set them apart and still conserve most of the line width (at least for my preferred screen/font sizes )

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

I was trying to understand the strongly stated proscription against all margins, as I'm struggling to see how that would work...But maybe I'm not correctly visualizing the JSWolf's formatting implications.

Of course, you need to employ margin! (and padding). And JSWolf do employ margins! Watch for example one of the epubs made by him:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=177182

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

Yes, all of this is consistent with what I wrote....

... and yet!

Ebook producers must make certain assumptions. You write "you don't know how people will set things so you have to test all different things" [emphasis added]. This is impossible right? And impractical. You don't test user setting assuming a 2.5" x 4" screen with font size set to 1500%, do you? I mean, if you have to test ALL different things...

But clearly that's not what's literally meant here. What's meant by it is: you have to test it against an idealized range and accept that SOME outlier cases will result in undesired rendering of your formatting. My question is/was what is that idealized range? For example, I assume that most people will have their font setting larger on a dedicated ereader than on a phone because they are usually held at different distances from one's face. This is an assumption, not an empirically tested observation, but it is part of what goes into creating the boundaries around what constitutes the aforementioned "idealized range". Likewise, I assume that for an ereader, there is a range of font sizes on an approximately 6.5" screen in which formatting will look great, a range of font sizes in which it'll look fine, a range in which it'll look crummy, and a range of at which it will become unreadable... (usually it's around 9pt-11pt, 12-15, 16-20, and greater than 20)...

---

Separately, you mentioned that "an ebook should have no margins". I'm assuming that you meant left/right margins (since 0em top/bottom would make headings run directly into the body text). But even under that assumption, how do you deal with blockquotes? Don't they need margins to offset them from the rest of the text??

You get a small cell phone and test at reasonably large font sizes to see where it first goes off (formatting). Sure there will people who will go as big as possible and have other sorts of settings, but the thing is that you cannot please everyone. Buy you can test at reasonable extremes.

As for margins, I am meaning the overall left/right margins. I've seen plenty of eBooks with stupidly large L/R margins to try to match the pBook. You can't do that as this is an eBook and not a pBook.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

A heading and first paragraph styles in CSS would have each their own margins (and a padding-top for anything first item in a file), if not text-align: center;.

The blockquote is really an HTML 3 or something throwback. It can have a useful semantic meaning and each kind would have its own CSS and thus margins.

If it's simply to have a different set of margins and maybe font, then a <p class="myquote1"> etc may be better.

I don't use blockquotes at all, usually. The different paragraph styles in the docx give different 1:1 CSS.

I dislike not using blockquotes where they should be used which is to offset text.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I dislike not using blockquotes where they should be used which is to offset text.

See letters, poems, hymns, songs. Better done with suitable multiple classes and a <p>

The quote here is an example of the kind of thing a "blockquote" is sematically for.

[ElMiko]

@JSWolf - Ah, ok, that's a lot clearer re: margins. Regarding stress-testing the screen/font size, it seems that you're restating the original premise of the question. What's missing is quantification: What is "small" to you (in terms of screen size)? What is "reasonable" to you (in terms of font-size)?

@Quoth - I'm not sure I understand your post: are you saying that (in the context of a work of fiction) blocks of text which contain "letters, poems, hymns, songs" stylistically set apart from the main text do not constitute block quotations?