Formatting Epub Output

[mrmls]

Originally Posted by kazbates

There is a good 1/2 inch border on all sides and it is not fully justified.

The last time I checked it wasn't possible to fully justify an epub file for Sony readers. On Sigil it was OK, but Sony's reader didn't justify.
Here is one of the topics : https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88323

[Toxaris]

That is not quite true. On the older Sony's it is not possible, but I believe that the PRS-350 and PRS-650 have a newer version of ADE on it which does support justification.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

Most epubs that have started out as Microsoft Word html are usually very bad.
90% of the time using Calibre to convert to htmlz then using open word to open and then saving the file as html cleans half of it. Then I use htmltidy in notepad++ if I feel their is still to much code left before using sigil to clean up the rest.
Its a long process but it works for me I don't even use sigil to split on chapter page breaks just mark the chapter heading etc And then import into calibre to do an epub to epub conversion.

True, the word conversions are very bad. However, I feel the Calibre conversions are also not very nice. I know the phrase 'garbage in - garbage out', but still I feel that Calibre adds to much code which I find redundant or not desirable. I choose good clean Sigil code every time.

[mrmls]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

That is not quite true. On the older Sony's it is not possible, but I believe that the PRS-350 and PRS-650 have a newer version of ADE on it which does support justification.

Happy to hear it.
It was just a warning not to bash head and spend all night up wondering what is wrong when fully justification is not working on older devices

[JSWolf]

The 900., 350, 650, & 950 all have a version of ADE that allows for full justification and no page numbers in the right margin. So it's OK to go full out to the the right margin. In fact, on my 650 I prefer no margins at all.

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have a good idea. I'll find a free ePub that could use some format fixing and we can use that. It doesn't have to be one that I want to read.

Thanks, Jon. That would be great.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The 900., 350, 650, & 950 all have a version of ADE that allows for full justification and no page numbers in the right margin. So it's OK to go full out to the the right margin. In fact, on my 650 I prefer no margins at all.

Other epub books that I have purchased for my 650 are full-justified and look great. These books happened to be from Kensington publishing and the CSS lists margins as percentages (ie., 4 %) as opposed to em (ie., 0.5em) as it is in the ebook that looks good.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Thanks, Jon. That would be great.

I'll have a look in the freebies section tomorrow or the day after and see what I can find.

Other epub books that I have purchased for my 650 are full-justified and look great. These books happened to be from Kensington publishing and the CSS lists margins as percentages (ie., 4 %) as opposed to em (ie., 0.5em) as it is in the ebook that looks good.

4% for a margin is a really stupid move. It's way too wide. What title is this that has the 4% margin(s)?

[cybmole]

[QUOTE=kazbates;1508369 There is a good 1/2 inch border on all sides and it is not fully justified..[/QUOTE]
often the case with Adobe Digitial Editions ( ADE for short) very easy to fix. those books have an extra, hideous stylesheet file. see e.g. this thread for how to remove it / negate it's effects.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&highlight=ade

justification is v easy in all cases. you look at the stylesheet file & look for (find) anything that says text-align: followed by one of these words left, right, centre, justify. replace left with justify & you should be done.

you may also find that simply running the book through calibre i.e. convert it from epub to epub will so an automated repair of page settings & take out your wide margins.

[snarkophilus]

Kaz,

The epubs I've bought (from Borders Australia) usually have something like this at the top of the .css file (in the Styles folder in Sigil):

@page { margin-bottom: 1em;margin-left: 1em;margin-right 1em;margin-top: 1em;}
body { margin-bottom: 1em;margin-left: 1em;margin-right 1em;margin-top: 1em;}

If you have something like that, you can try changing all those "1em" to "0" and see if that gets rid of your borders.

Calibre conversions seem to stick the @page section in the top of each .html file. I've found Sigil's find&replace is the easiest way to clean these up.


For the justification, my purchased epubs usually have "text-align: justify;" in the relevant paragraph definition in the .css. so this is done alreay. For example, the main text might have paragraphs that start with:

<p class="tx">It was a dark and stormy night...

and in the css is:

p.tx {
...
text-align: justify;
...
}

For these there's no hard-and-fast fix without looking at the css first.

In general, I get Kindle books and convert with Calibre as that's usually the cheaper option.

Cheers,
Simon.

[theducks]

Yikes! a 2em border.

What a waste of expensive screen space, when that function is served by a cheap, plastic bezel

The old print trick of more white space to make more pages, so you think you are getting a bigger book for that huge price

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by snarkophilus

Kaz,

The epubs I've bought (from Borders Australia) usually have something like this at the top of the .css file (in the Styles folder in Sigil):

@page { margin-bottom: 1em;margin-left: 1em;margin-right 1em;margin-top: 1em;}
body { margin-bottom: 1em;margin-left: 1em;margin-right 1em;margin-top: 1em;}

Which is pretty stupid. Why have margins in both body and @page? And why have margins in body at all? In particular top and bottom margins in body apply only to the first and last screens in the flow, not to every "page".

This works very well for me:

@page { margin: 2mm; }
html body { margin: 0; } /* this is to override the default in my Cybook */

[DaleDe]

margin: 2mm;

Why even bothering with units that need to be translated, converted? Why not margin: 2px; and go direct to pixels. No fuss and you know exactly what the eBook reader will do with it.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Why even bothering with units that need to be translated, converted? Why not margin: 2px; and go direct to pixels. No fuss and you know exactly what the eBook reader will do with it.

Because I want 2mm, not 2px.

OK, I could say that with my current device (166ppi), 2mm ~ 13px. But if next year I get a device with 2000ppi resolution, I still want 2mm, not 13px, which would be 0.17mm. I want an absolute size for my margins, not a resolution-dependent size.

[kazbates]

This particular book has 2106 lines of formating. Trying to make some sense of it all is excrutiatingly difficult, especially after spending the day with 25 4th graders! I can figure out the margin stuff, but I have no idea what all the qualifiers are at the beginning of each section. I think this snippet (the first 40 or so lines) that I've posted here was for the stuff that comes before the actual book text but I have yet to find where the actual body of the book begins or were in aligns the text.

body
{
margin-right: 25px;
}
a {

}

.aboutPublisherPage {
display: block;
page-break-before: always;
}


.aboutPublisherHead {
display: block;
margin-top: 5%;
margin-bottom: 5%;
text-indent: 0%;
font-size: large;
font-weight:bold;
}


.aboutPublisherText {
display: block;
margin-top: 0%;
margin-bottom: 0%;
text-indent: 0%;

font-weight: normal;
}


.aboutPublisherText1 {
display: block;
margin-top: 0%;
margin-bottom: 0%;
text-indent: 0%;
font-size: medium;
font-weight: normal;
}

Jon, I should be embarrased to say that it is a trashy romance, but I'm not. The title of the book is "The Jaguar Prince". It was written (badly) by an author I've liked in the past. Unfortunately, I have to agree with theducks that the wide margins were to make a quickly published book look better.

I'm mostly interested in learning to understand the problem in case it happens with a book that I really like.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kazbates

This particular book has 2106 lines of formating. Trying to make some sense of it all is excrutiatingly difficult, especially after spending the day with 25 4th graders! I can figure out the margin stuff, but I have no idea what all the qualifiers are at the beginning of each section. I think this snippet (the first 40 or so lines) that I've posted here was for the stuff that comes before the actual book text but I have yet to find where the actual body of the book begins or were in aligns the text.

body
{
margin-right: 25px;
}

Jon, I should be embarrased to say that it is a trashy romance, but I'm not. The title of the book is "The Jaguar Prince". It was written (badly) by an author I've liked in the past. Unfortunately, I have to agree with theducks that the wide margins were to make a quickly published book look better.

I'm mostly interested in learning to understand the problem in case it happens with a book that I really like.

Well, you see that one.

Body affects the whole of the file viewable contents. Think of it as the box holding the page (this may be one or more chapters).
this has a 25px right margin (probably because Adobe puts page-block numbers there. I use 16px with my base font at 1.2em= small numbers and paperback size text on my PocketEZ)


The CSS piece you show looks like it belongs to the 'boiler plate' of the book.

Find a chapter headding, the swich to CV now you should see the code that is attached to the trashy words
Work from the inside out. Find the selectors you see in the CSS (place holders shown)

<Body class="bb"> <<and lastly, here
<div class="ss"> <<then here
<p class="xx yy"> <<start here , find it in the css
notE: there may be 2 or more selectors as I have shown

yy takes precedence over any conflicting entries in xx