Rendering Drop Caps

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But it will break something because it's going to go against the eBook's CSS. If the CSS has a working dropcap, you'll mess that up. If the dropcap is broken, it's broken and you should not try to fix it.

Drop caps are impossible to do perfectly with CSS for arbitrary fonts. I think the renderer is correct to recognise the attempt and render it correctly for the current font.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Drop caps are impossible to do perfectly with CSS for arbitrary fonts. I think the renderer is correct to recognise the attempt and render it correctly for the current font.

But that would be overriding the CSS and then publisher mode is dead. To have publisher mode, you need to respect the book's CSS even if it display's dropcaps poorly.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But that would be overriding the CSS and then publisher mode is dead. To have publisher mode, you need to respect the book's CSS even if it display's dropcaps poorly.

All markup is to express the intent of the author. If the intent is a well formed drop cap, then rendering that intent is the correct thing to do.

I look forward to trying out the new code when the next version appears in the app store.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

All markup is to express the intent of the author. If the intent is a well formed drop cap, then rendering that intent is the correct thing to do.

I look forward to trying out the new code when the next version appears in the app store.

That's fine for when you turn off Publisher Mode. But the reason for Publisher Mode is to follow the CSS. So if you are helping out the dropcaps, then it's no longer Publisher Mode.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The rendering of drop caps at the start of chapters could do with some improvement. For some reason several books I've read recently have had Drop Caps, and justRead.app's rendering isn't as good as, say, calibre's.

These are all with publishers' style enabled.

Drop Caps is really rather hard to do sensibly, and I don't know what CSS these books have used, but I attach scrambled copies.

For "A Sorceress comes to Call", the two line drop cap is rendered as a raised cap instead.

For "Bones in the Blackout" the three line drop cap looks about the right size, but the baseline is wrong.

For "Foundryside", the three line drop cap is also about the right size, but with the wrong baseline, and the initial letter colour choice isn't obeyed.

I attach screenshots from justRead.app 1.9 and calibre 8.16.2

Out of curiosity, I wanted to know how MapleRead would render the drop caps for those 3 (scrambled) ePub books. So I did a simple test and found out that MapleRead rendered as Calibre did, as shown in the quoted screenshots. I just turned on Apply Publisher's Style and set all parameters to Publisher's value.

[cedhax]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That's fine for when you turn off Publisher Mode. But the reason for Publisher Mode is to follow the CSS. So if you are helping out the dropcaps, then it's no longer Publisher Mode.

Totally agree, especially when it is technically possible to follow the publisher's (CSS) style and get exactly what is expected.

[pdurrant]

With justRead 2.6:




The first one is perfect. In the second the drop cap is a little high, and in the third it's only over two lines, and not grey.

These are all with Publisher's settings turned on, and font size 135%. I don't know why the base font in the last one is so small - it might be to do with the CSS in that book, I haven't looked.

So it's much improved, but could do with a little more tweaking.

[petrjahoda]

Hi, say this is weird. So I downloaded again those three books from the first post. Turned on publishers and navigate to random chapter start (and then other chapter start).

And all three books are rendered... see screenshots.

Just to be sure: bookerly font, no scroll, 3% horizontal margin, 11% top margin, 5% bottom margin, 170% font size, regular font weight, publishers mode.

What options do you have, please?

[pdurrant]

I have 4% horizontal margins, 13.5% top margin, 11.25% bottom margin, Font size 135%, font weight Regylar, Publisher Style On.

But I can't tell you what font - the font menu pops up and immediately disappears. Same for TOC, Bookmarks, Highlights, Night/Day, and stats. The setting menu is the only one out of that bottom bar that opens and stays open. I've emailed you a video.

I don't know which version this started happening with - since I set up the fonts, etc, I haven't had to go back and use them.

The first of your images (8/Z) matches what I'm seeing, but the drop cap should, I think, be over three lines. And the drop cap should be in a different colour to the text.

The other two look right in your images. It's the 2/U one that differs from my image. I suspect it's because of a different font. I might be using Hoeffler Text, if the font menu shows the current font at the top. (or top as displayed.)

Drop caps are tricky, as for good visual display they must depend on some measurements from the font being used.

[petrjahoda]

Hi pdurrant and thank you, switched to Hoefflerr and got the same result Will look into it.

[petrjahoda]

Hi to all, found it. It has got something to do with books created with https://vellum.pub
Found a fix for it and it will be in the next version.

[pdurrant]

Great! Thanks for looking into it again.

[JSWolf]

Drop caps have one other major issue. They break searching if the eBook is mean to be backwards compatible with ePub2 or is ePub2.

[petrjahoda]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Drop caps have one other major issue. They break searching if the eBook is mean to be backwards compatible with ePub2 or is ePub2.

Hi JSWolf, I do not understand what do you mean by that sentence, can you please describe it better?

[pdurrant]

I think he means that because there's markup around the drop cap, a search for a word won't find instances of that word that have a drop cap , because the letters in the word aren't contiguous.

(With ePub 3 I think you can do it with CSS styling of first character in a first paragraph, so characters of the word remain contiguous, while in ePub 2 you have to make it a <span>)