How/what do I edit in this to fix the appearance on my device?

[Dal Bhat]

This book was an epub converted to azw3 in calibre, polished and sent to Kindle.

The attached show what the text looks like in calibre's editor, and the code.

On the Kindle, however, that dropcap looks exactly as though it were written as superscript or an exponent-- Small and snugged up against the left side of the second character.

This is repeated after the Prologue at each new chapter. The only text funkiness I see in the book.

It's not as though I can't read it; it just bugs me and I'd like to learn more about editing.

How do I search this out in the book, and is there a fix?

[theducks]

I would add a

padding-right: .1em;

to .dropcaps in the css
I use padding as some viewers override margin

[Dal Bhat]

I can find that section in Live css, but I don't k how to edit it to add that line.

[Karellen]

You have to edit the css file. It is usually called stylesheet.css. It is in the Styles section underneath the list of xhtml files.

[Dal Bhat]

A ha. Thanks. Trying the fix now.

[Dal Bhat]

And no dice. Still have a superscript-looking first character, nothing like a dropcap.

[Karellen]

Yes, it will be difficult to fix the dropcap. You need to be aware that while the coding in the stylesheet.css can be spot on perfect, it is the readers that cause the problem. Readers tend to ignore and adjust the css rules to fit a particular style the manufacturers are going for... all in the effort of providing a perfect reading experience for the end user.
So, what will work in one ereader, may not work in another. For this reason I gave up on drop caps many years ago.

Your best solution is to do away with drop-caps. There are plenty of threads on this forum regarding how "bad" and unsuited they are to ebooks.

But if you do want it fixed for personal use on a single ereader that you use, then you would need to provide the ebook in scrambled format, and hopefully somebody with the same ereader as you can volunteer to fix and test.

[Dal Bhat]

But if you do want it fixed for personal use on a single ereader

Nah, it's not that important. But thanks for the background on them in general.

Now, to just change it to a normal character in this book, would I simply delete the .dropcaps section of the css? Will that hose anything else in the text?

[DNSB]

You could try the following:

.dropcap {
  float: left;
  font-size: 2.5em;
  line-height: 1.5;
  margin-bottom: -0.4em;
  margin-right: 0.05em;
  margin-top: -0.35em;
}

Though as mentioned, dropcaps are a total PITA. You can make them look good on one device/app and they will need adjustment for another device/app.

My current choice for most purposes if someone insists on dropcaps is:

.dropcap {
  font-size: 1.5em;
  margin-top: -0.09em;
}

which is a pretty minimal dropcap.

[Karellen]

I use an enlarged first character as shown in the image...

Attachment 206156

which is created by...

<p class="scene"><span class="firstletterscene">M</span>

.scene {
padding-bottom: 0.01em;
padding-top: 2em;
text-indent: 0;
}

.firstletterscene {
font-size: 1.5em;
line-height: 1em;
}

If you don't want that, then remove the <span> surrounding the first letter using a Regex S&R.

Search... <span class="dropcaps">(\w)</span>
Replace... \1

[Dal Bhat]

That worked just right, the S&R.

Thanks very much.

[JSWolf]

The best solution is to delete the dropcap code in the the HTML and CSS.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The best solution is to delete the dropcap code in the the HTML and CSS.

That is the easiest way around, but is it the best?

You lose the appearance the publisher / author wanted. Unfortunately, one solution does not work well (if at all) across devices. Kobo's break on wide letters (M, W) over a certain size. Kindles baseline seems to differ from Kobo (Kepub) so the adjusted margin-top, margin-bottom, vary in the up-down placement.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

That is the easiest way around, but is it the best?

You lose the appearance the publisher / author wanted. Unfortunately, one solution does not work well (if at all) across devices. Kobo's break on wide letters (M, W) over a certain size. Kindles baseline seems to differ from Kobo (Kepub) so the adjusted margin-top, margin-bottom, vary in the up-down placement.

A lot of the time, the appearance is to try to match that of the pBook and it doesn't always work well. I have no idea if the author is approving this.

Personally, I don't like drop caps, large letter, small caps, and bold at the beginning of the first paragraph of a chapter and sometimes the beginning of the first paragraph after a section break.

[Dal Bhat]

The solution Karellen showed me was dropdead easy and, as far as I'm concerned, the best. Because it got me what I wanted with a few keystrokes and clicks and didn't otherwise change the appearance of the book on the Kindle.