CSS files and reading software

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by rkomar

It doesn't look like this would work on a different manufacturer's device, in that I doubt that
/mnt/ext1/system/fonts is standard. So I would guess that the resultant epub would be "locked" to the PB readers. Is there no way to ask for a font without needing to specify the exact path, say through some kind of system default path?

You are correct that the res:///mnt/ext1/system/fonts is specific to PocketBooks. This seemed reasonable as paola's readers both appear to be PBs.

A Sony would need to be res:///Data/....

This is the situation I have myself, Sonys and a PB, and is why hacked firmware (PRSPlus on a Sony) is a better solution for me because the magic css file is a Sony version on both Sonys and a PB version on the PB. The same epub reads equally well on all devices. Horses for courses.

I'm not sure how you'd ever get round the problem that the user-accessible internal memory root is different on each device, res:///Data on a Sony, res:///mnt/ext1 on a PB... and who knows what else on a different reader

[paola]

jackie_w, thanks so much for your detailed explanations, the fog is slowly lifting

I have now put all the code in the Extra CSS box in the preferences/common options tab (under ocnversion), and it works!
The only thing which doesn't yet work is the "width: x%", which Calibre refuses to put anywere - but I guess this is a question for the Calibr forum.

Adding the code to Calibre once adn for all makes everything so much easier - and rkomar, thanks for your concern, but the three readers in the house are all pocketbook - and anyhow I now get the drift of how to change things.

Real pity for the lack of a css file for Adobe!

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by paola

... and rkomar, thanks for your concern, but the three readers in the house are all pocketbook ...

Well, I wasn't being totally altruistic . As a programmer, I was curious about the requirement for file paths when loading resources like fonts. I would have thought there would be some system-independent way to do it. Maybe this is why so many books include their own fonts.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by paola

The only thing which doesn't yet work is the "width: x%", which Calibre refuses to put anywere - but I guess this is a question for the Calibr forum.

What did you actually type in Calibre? I've never needed to override image CSS myself but I would imagine it should be something like this in the ExtraCSS box

img {width: x%;}

Originally Posted by paola

Real pity for the lack of a css file for Adobe!

I couldn't agree more! The only reason these hacks are required at all is because the Adobe software (on both Sony and PB) has hard-coded the location of the default css file inside the firmware rather than in the user-accessible area. I've no idea what they can possibly hope to gain from this. The Sony has had 4 generations of reader now and it still isn't fixed. To add insult to injury, the PB360 firmware v15.3 has buried the css location even deeper, so that it's no longer possible to do the hack. Unbelievable! I'm not sure what the situation is with the newer PBs. Rant over.

Anyway, I'm glad you've got the hang of the font stuff. Makes for much nicer reading

[paola]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

What did you actually type in Calibre? I've never needed to override image CSS myself but I would imagine it should be something like this in the ExtraCSS box

img {width: x%;}

Hi Jackie, Since in this specific epub calibre put the image class as .calibre3, after generating the epub I erased it and put as extra css in the "common options" (in Preferences\conversion) the code:

.calibre3 {
    height: auto;
    width: 75%
    }

but Calibre ignores this completely. After reading your message I also tried your

img {width: x%;}

as well as

img {height: auto, width: x%}

but again, nothing: these codes appear nowere in the final file, as if I put nothing in (though the other formatting commands are accepted, and appear at the beginning of each "chapter"; similarly, the css files now "imports" the font info, as

.calibre {
    display: block;
    font-family: "LexiaDaMa", serif;
    font-size: 1em;
    line-height: 1.2;
    margin-bottom: 0;
    margin-left: 5pt;
    margin-right: 5pt;
    margin-top: 0;
    padding-left: 0;
    padding-right: 0;
    text-align: justify
    }

(my bold), which it didn't before. In the meantime I had posted a question on the Calibre conversion forum, but so far got no reply. If I do get one, I'll update you - or if you do have any more suggestions, I am all ears

@rkomar: as expected, indeed the font info is ignored if I open the epub on my laptop. As you say, if there was a way to give some sort of wildcard to the "font" directory that would work on all devices, that would be so much better - for instance, I'd rather double check that all is well with the book before transferring it to the device - or if I were ever to change device. Perhaps the current situation is because not enough people are bothered by this, so not enough people are giving it enough thought to come up with a solution...

[jackie_w]

@paola,

Regarding the calibre3 thing... every time you do a Calibre conversion, Calibre renumbers the calibrenn class names. If you had an epub with a class called calibre3 then you could overwrite the css for this particular class by doing another epub-epub conversion with

.calibre3 {...}

in the ExtraCSS box for this particular book (on the Look&Feel page), i.e. not the ExtraCSS in Preferences.

The caveat is that if you enter something in the individual ExtraCSS it will be used instead of the Preferences ExtraCSS. If you've already forced the @font-faces etc into the epub, it may not matter.

On the other hand it might just be faster to use the Tweak-epub feature to edit the width% in the epub's css.

[jackie_w]

@paola, I've just had another thought.

I've never had any problems with epub images if I've created the epub with Calibre. Calibre should scale the images automatically to fit on the screen. What do you have set as your Calibre 'Output Profile' in Prefs - Common Options - Page Setup. I have mine set as Sony Reader and it seems to work fine on my PB360

I have had problems with epub images in AdobeViewer on the PB360 (with firmware 15.2) if I have the zoom-level set higher than 3. The images seem to 'balloon' at zoom-level 4 and above. So do the epub page numbers down the right-hand edge.

Might this be your problem? Do your images display correctly in the Calibre Viewer?

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by paola

@rkomar: as expected, indeed the font info is ignored if I open the epub on my laptop. As you say, if there was a way to give some sort of wildcard to the "font" directory that would work on all devices, that would be so much better - for instance, I'd rather double check that all is well with the book before transferring it to the device - or if I were ever to change device. Perhaps the current situation is because not enough people are bothered by this, so not enough people are giving it enough thought to come up with a solution...

Maybe the solution is as simple as removing the "src:" line from your CSS if the font is in the system default location. I can see that you would need to specify "src" for an embedded font (which is what you originally had), and it would always be correct on any system because it is relative to the document's file structure. However, it might be the wrong thing to do for system fonts.

[paola]

[QUOTE=jackie_w;1540006]What did you actually type in Calibre? I've never needed to override image CSS myself but I would imagine it should be something like this in the ExtraCSS box

img {width: x%;}

I put

.calibre3 {
    height: auto;
    width: 75%
    }

I tried to put it in the "look and feel" Extra CSS field for individual book conversions, but no change.

Originally Posted by jackie_w

@paola, I've just had another thought.

I've never had any problems with epub images if I've created the epub with Calibre. Calibre should scale the images automatically to fit on the screen. What do you have set as your Calibre 'Output Profile' in Prefs - Common Options - Page Setup. I have mine set as Sony Reader and it seems to work fine on my PB360

In the Calibre viewer Images look fine - the outpu profile is set to "Cybus opus", which is the default setup after running the welcome wizard and selecting "Pocketbook 360 and new models" as the device. At any rate I have experimented with other outputs (including both "Sony" and "geenric large e-ink device"), but it loooks like it makes no difference, at least in the Calibre reader - I will check what happens when I actually try teh various versions in the device.

Originally Posted by rkomar

Maybe the solution is as simple as removing the "src:" line from your CSS if the font is in the system default location. I can see that you would need to specify "src" for an embedded font (which is what you originally had), and it would always be correct on any system because it is relative to the document's file structure. However, it might be the wrong thing to do for system fonts.

You mean putting e.g.

@font-face {
  font-family: "LexiaDaMa";
  font-weight: bold;
  font-style: italic;
}

instead of
@font-face {
font-family: "LexiaDaMa";
font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
src: url(../Fonts/LexiaDaMa-BoldItalic.ttf);
}
I'll try and let you know.

Guys, again many thanks for your help!

[paola]

Originally Posted by rkomar

Maybe the solution is as simple as removing the "src:" line from your CSS if the font is in the system default location. I can see that you would need to specify "src" for an embedded font (which is what you originally had), and it would always be correct on any system because it is relative to the document's file structure. However, it might be the wrong thing to do for system fonts.

Hi rkomar, just tested: unfortunately removing the line does not work, the font info is ignored - I presume Pocketbook does not know where to go and look for fonts.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by paola

Hi rkomar, just tested: unfortunately removing the line does not work, the font info is ignored - I presume Pocketbook does not know where to go and look for fonts.

One of the weaknesses with choosing fonts is that you have to spell the name exactly as the system sees it. Try using the "Configuration->Appearance->Interface font" tool to see that your font is available, and what exact name it appears under (including any spaces). It may not be "LexiaDaMa", but something similar like "Lexia DaMa". Using that exact name (with quotes around it if it contains spaces) for "font-family:" in your .calibre block should cause it to be used. You probably don't need the "@font-face:" blocks at all for system (i.e. non-embedded) fonts.

In the above, I assumed that you copied your fonts to the /mnt/ext1/system/fonts directory already.

[paola]

Originally Posted by rkomar

One of the weaknesses with choosing fonts is that you have to spell the name exactly as the system sees it. Try using the "Configuration->Appearance->Interface font" tool to see that your font is available, and what exact name it appears under (including any spaces). It may not be "LexiaDaMa", but something similar like "Lexia DaMa". Using that exact name (with quotes around it if it contains spaces) for "font-family:" in your .calibre block should cause it to be used. You probably don't need the "@font-face:" blocks at all for system (i.e. non-embedded) fonts.

In the above, I assumed that you copied your fonts to the /mnt/ext1/system/fonts directory already.

rkomar, you are absolutely right, the name of the font in the internal system is "Lexia DaMa". So I have tried just tweaking the epub in calibre, adding the line

font-family: "Lexia DaMa", serif;

in the .calibre block, but it did not work.

So I tried with the "full" version of the code, but removing the "src" line, and it did not work either (and yes, the fonts are where they should be, and indeed they are found even when fonts are not embedded). But perhaps I haven't fully understood your suggestion.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by paola

rkomar, you are absolutely right, the name of the font in the internal system is "Lexia DaMa". So I have tried just tweaking the epub in calibre, adding the line

font-family: "Lexia DaMa", serif;

in the .calibre block, but it did not work.

So I tried with the "full" version of the code, but removing the "src" line, and it did not work either (and yes, the fonts are where they should be, and indeed they are found even when fonts are not embedded). But perhaps I haven't fully understood your suggestion.

I think I would go back to the original CSS file, search for "font-family" statements where "Fontin, serif" is specified, and then just add "Lexia DaMa" before it in those lines:

font-family: "Lexia DaMa", Fontin, serif;

That way, the Lexia font will be used if it is available, and the embedded Fontin font will be used as a fallback. You may have to do this in a few places in the CSS file. Leave the Fontin @font-face blocks as they are.

I'm not a Calibre expert, but I wouldn't be surprized if you could set the preferred fonts within Calibre itself when doing the conversion.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I'm not sure how you'd ever get round the problem that the user-accessible internal memory root is different on each device, res:///Data on a Sony, res:///mnt/ext1 on a PB... and who knows what else on a different reader

I've been reading up on CSS @font-face, and apparently you should be able to use something like:

src: local("Lexia DaMa")

to tell it to find the font locally rather than specifying an exact path via a url. Hooray! CSS has a reasonable way of handling this! Unfortunately, AdobeViewer.app seems to ignore the /mnt/ext1/system/fonts/ directory when searching locally, too, so this doesn't help in our case. I guess I shouldn't be surprized, because if it worked, just adding the font name to the font-family: list would probably have worked, too. So, embedding the font in the book seems to be the only system-agnostic way to use new fonts with AdobeViewer on the PB devices. I'll submit this as an AdobeViewer bug, and maybe something will happen about it.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by rkomar

I've been reading up on CSS @font-face, and apparently you should be able to use something like:

src: local("Lexia DaMa")

to tell it to find the font locally rather than specifying an exact path via a url. Hooray! CSS has a reasonable way of handling this! Unfortunately, AdobeViewer.app seems to ignore the /mnt/ext1/system/fonts/ directory when searching locally, too, so this doesn't help in our case. I guess I shouldn't be surprized, because if it worked, just adding the font name to the font-family: list would probably have worked, too. So, embedding the font in the book seems to be the only system-agnostic way to use new fonts with AdobeViewer on the PB devices. I'll submit this as an AdobeViewer bug, and maybe something will happen about it.

I see you are a programmer. I'm not sure whether you ever read this old thread but it contains the simple detail of the original AdobeViewer hack, along with the difficulty of repeating it in the more recent firmware versions.

If you have any ideas of how to re-hack I, for one, would be very pleased