Any way to double the line returns in an ePub?

[mrmikel]

Down with bloated pngs!

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by mrmikel

Down with bloated pngs!

Down with bloated JPGs!

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...5&postcount=26

[JSWolf]

Down with poorly formatted eBooks! Down with paragraph spaces, wide margins, 5% indents, 14% top margin for chapter headers and other stupid formatting.

[DomesticExtremis]

I like a nicely formatted books. Ample margins and
separately formatted title pages etc, etc.

If I just wanted a screenful of text I would use a plain
text file and not bother with ePUB.

[theducks]

I prefer

margin-top: .5em;
text-indent: 1.2em;

[mrmikel]

I prefer what looks nice and it varies from book to book based on how it was laid out originally. I like to keep the spirit of it rather than be chained to what was possible with a typewriter in 1945.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

I prefer

margin-top: .5em;
text-indent: 1.2em;

I use a top margin of .8em and a bottom margin of .8em for a chapter title unless there's a need to use something else based on the text/format.

I like a text indent of 1.2em as well. As for paragraph spaces, 0 work well for me. I like a 2em space for a section break that's just blank space.

I also like no margin. But then, on a 6" screen, the lines are not too long and with my 650, the bezel does not get in the way. On a black iPad with a black bezel, a small margin is good so the text doesn't run into the bezel.

I know spacing can be good depending on the book and the formatting needed, but I cannot see a need for a 14% top margin for chapter headers.

[Freeshadow]

Tex, the day Jon will accept that other people may have tastes and opinions differing from his own and thus stops shoving down his personal preferences down other peoples throats disguised as absolute truths is also the day when pigs 'll fly, crossing the frozen pits of hell.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Tex, the day Jon will accept that other people may have tastes and opinions differing from his own and thus stops shoving down his personal preferences down other peoples throats disguised as absolute truths is also the day when pigs 'll fly, crossing the frozen pits of hell.

What I mentioned in the previous post is things done buy the publisher. Things that have no reason to be done that way. 5% spacing, 14% spacing, small fonts (as the default font size), large margins, large paragraph spaces, images (like the cover) that are off the screen/ADE window, and other things.

There are a lot of things publishers don't do correctly and this has nothing to do with how you like your eBooks to look. Just ask Hitch to tell you. I'm shure she will mostly agree here.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Tex, the day Jon will accept that other people may have tastes and opinions differing from his own and thus stops shoving down his personal preferences down other peoples throats disguised as absolute truths is also the day when pigs 'll fly, crossing the frozen pits of hell.

Well it reminds me a lot like debates. You have both sides, who won't really convince the other side that they are correct, but the main purpose is to have the discussion so that the AUDIENCE can see/read/hear both sides and then make an informed decision.

In the case of a forum, I always like to talk about the Lurkers, and those who DON'T post, but still absorb/learn a lot of information from what is said.

This is one of the reasons why the ereaders all those override settings on devices. So everyone can, with the click of a button, change the line-spacing, paragraph spacing, alignment, font sizes, colors, margins, etc. etc.... to whatever THEY prefer (or maybe NEED, in the case of someone with a reading impairment/disability).

And this is one of the reasons why I LOVE ebooks over physical books.

I would just say, probably THE MOST important thing though, is to have CLEAN and CONSISTENT code, so then it is easy for someone to go in there and tweak it if needed... for example, don't have an insane amount of spaghetti code + overlapping CSS + a ton of classes overriding the same stuff + a ton of worthless class names (calibre##, block##, p##, no-style-override-#, ...).

For example, I showed off some InDesign code Before/After cleaning here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...20&postcount=6

Sure, having tons of hideous code in the backend might still LOOK ok on the surface, but the problems really start to come when you want to do anything else with it.

Spaghetti code will come to haunt you in the NEXT ebook format, when you want to convert these spaghetti code EPUBs into format X..... and things will go wrong, and you will spend a lot of time/money trying to fix the problems that arose because of previous horrible code. Make it clean/consistent NOW, and save yourself the future headaches.

Side Note: Also, clean/consistent code means easy to transfer to other formats as well... for example, here is some images of one of my EPUB->LaTeX->PDF conversions (comparison of Archive.org scan + LaTeX PDF):

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...6&postcount=58

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

[Tex2002ans]

Forgive the double-post, but I noticed JSWolf's post way after I submitted mine.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There are a lot of things publishers don't do correctly and this has nothing to do with how you like your eBooks to look. Just ask Hitch to tell you. I'm shure she will mostly agree here.

You also have to keep in mind the economics behind it. Print still is where the money is at, and many of these companies have their complicated workflows set in stone. They are designing their books for PRINT FIRST (InDesign, Quark, DocBook, etc. etc.).

Luckily, those slow lumbering beasts in the publishing industry are probably going to start shifting more towards EBOOK FIRST mentality, as ebooks start to rise in popularity, and more people start to consume their books on the web/ereaders/tablets/smartphones. For now, it is still in that awkward growing phase.

Reminds me a lot of the discussion we had going on here in the "Automated Workflows" topic: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=232413

I also linked to these two fantastic articles (which I highly recommend everyone who is interested in this discussion should read):

"HTML5 is the Future of Book Authorship": http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/09/htm...uthorship.html
"The Case for Authoring and Producing Books in (X)HTML5": http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/...einfeld01.html

You also have the old school typographers, thinking of measurements in inches, millimeters, fixed page sizes, fixed font sizes, etc. etc... and new school typographers coming in with web/reflowability in mind.

All the old school typographers had to care about was the SURFACE... what the finished product LOOKS like. It doesn't matter to them if the code in the backend is complete trash, in a physical book, all you see is the end result! If you are designing everything in InDesign using all of the WYSYWIG editing, you just see how it will look when it is printed! (I liken this to all the authors who use a word processor, and don't use the Styles functionality).

The same sort of change is occurring currently in your typical UI Design. Now, instead of designing your application/website for desktops first, then creating some bastard stepchild of your site (mobile).... things are shifting more towards designing one site that scales/reflows to look good on any size device, because mobile is becoming a much larger portion of internet browsing.

You still have A TON of the Internet that doesn't work well on mobile, but that will slowly shift.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I mentioned in the previous post is things done buy the publisher. Things that have no reason to be done that way. 5% spacing, 14% spacing, small fonts (as the default font size), large margins, large paragraph spaces, images (like the cover) that are off the screen/ADE window, and other things.

There are a lot of things publishers don't do correctly and this has nothing to do with how you like your eBooks to look. Just ask Hitch to tell you. I'm shure she will mostly agree here.

Oooohhhhhhhhhhh, no. Mmm-mm. Not gonna take sides here.

Wolfie, I love ya, but you GOTTA realize that opinions are exactly like what everyone SAYS they are. Everybody has one. And what YOU like in ebooks, or don't, is different than what Jane Doe likes, or Sally Jones. You can't try to force everyone into your way of thinking.

And that is why e-readers (devices) are continually evolving into rendering machines, so to speak--letting the reader decide for him/herself.

That's my $.02.

Hitch

[mrmikel]

The issue is somewhat a technical one. When e-readers first came out, the computer horsepower available within the power limitations made them relatively slow. But it is now 5-6 years later and those trade offs don't have to be made so much in hardware.

The real limitations are standards that did not really address text and Adobe having the firmware market to themselves producing software at a glacial rate. Some fracturing of the market was inevitable, but Adobe has the biggest share of blame.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Oooohhhhhhhhhhh, no. Mmm-mm. Not gonna take sides here.

Wolfie, I love ya, but you GOTTA realize that opinions are exactly like what everyone SAYS they are. Everybody has one. And what YOU like in ebooks, or don't, is different than what Jane Doe likes, or Sally Jones. You can't try to force everyone into your way of thinking.

And that is why e-readers (devices) are continually evolving into rendering machines, so to speak--letting the reader decide for him/herself.

That's my $.02.

Hitch

But what I am saying is not a personal preference. I bet you'd agree that a lot of publishers make some pretty big mistakes with eBooks in terms of formatting and code under the hood. But even when the code is not really that bad, the formatting is.

It does seem that they take their document setup for print and just use it as is for the eBook and given the way the two mediums work, that doesn't always work well.

[Freeshadow]

While you are right with the 2nd; yes some publishers really build crap to the umpteenth power - the fact whether someone prefers indents or blank lines as paragraph separators is a matter of taste. In my case it differs, if its a textbook or fiction. Some textbooks ar so dense in their info dump, that a line creates a nice break in its reception.