Basic rules of ePubs

It'd be nice if there were standard CSS classes that covered a good portion of books, such as:

• Chapter heading
• First paragraph in section (usually not indented)
• Indented paragraph
• Scene break

And so on. Devices could then allow you to define what these mean, e.g. “put spacing between paragraphs and don't indent anything”, or “no spacing between paragraphs, 1.3em indent for paragraphs”, etc. Books would also provide fallbacks for non-compliant devices.

A few problems, of course:

1. Getting anybody to agree on standards is really difficult
2. It certainly wouldn't cover all cases, and might make things look at bit odd when mixing and matching publisher/user CSS settings
3. Very few people care about things like this

Every time I have to fix the CSS in a book I wish that either it didn't bother me or that there were standards. Neither of which will be very easy to achieve...

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

Thats the reason coolreader is my software reader of choice. Has the option to disable the internal styles of the book. And you can set style that you like so all books would load in that manner when you disable the internal styles of the book. I did not buy a reader till I found that Hanlin v3 used coolreader.

Not only CoolReader can do that; many ereaders have that feature, for example, PocketBook (for Android). Moreover, PocketBook supports the "float" property while CoolReader doesn't. AlReader is another good choice.

[murg]

Originally Posted by Colerson

• Chapter heading
• First paragraph in section (usually not indented)
• Indented paragraph
• Scene break

These are actually content related, and better handled by HTML.

CSS is a formatting language and doesn't know about content.

P.S. The first paragraph/indented paragraph are kinda on the cusp of being content/formatting.

[Barty]

^^^ if you use, say, <p class="normal"> and <p class="scene_break"> and define the style class in css, isn't that valid?

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by murg

These are actually content related, and better handled by HTML.

CSS is a formatting language and doesn't know about content.

P.S. The first paragraph/indented paragraph are kinda on the cusp of being content/formatting.

So you would say Phoenix Picks ebooks are done well? They have just about everything in the html, so I won't even waste time getting their freebies anymore.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by Barty

^^^ if you use, say, <p class="normal"> and <p class="scene_break"> and define the style class in css, isn't that valid?

*shudder*

I hate it when people use <p class="normal"> or worse yet <p class="para">. I know it's a paragraph that's why it's using the paragraph tag... sheesh.

I think it is much more elegant to simply style the normal paragraph ("normal" meaning the style that is 95% of the document) using:

p {all your normal paragraph styling}

...then use special classes for...well...special paragraphs (first, scenebreak, noindent, etc). It also makes for a much cleaner file and easier to see where there is special styling when you are editing in code view.

FWIW...

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

*shudder*

I hate it when people use <p class="normal"> or worse yet <p class="para">. I know it's a paragraph that's why it's using the paragraph tag... sheesh.

I think it is much more elegant to simply style the normal paragraph ("normal" meaning the style that is 95% of the document) using:

p {all your normal paragraph styling}

...then use special classes for...well...special paragraphs (first, scenebreak, noindent, etc). It also makes for a much cleaner file and easier to see where there is special styling when you are editing in code view.

FWIW...

I'm embarrassed to say that never occurred to me. I do web pages that way, but I've looked at so many epubs with <p class="normal"> or similar, that I just do that myself when formatting something by hand.

Or at least I did until right now.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

*shudder*

I hate it when people use <p class="normal"> or worse yet <p class="para">. I know it's a paragraph that's why it's using the paragraph tag... sheesh.

I think it is much more elegant to simply style the normal paragraph ("normal" meaning the style that is 95% of the document) using:

p {all your normal paragraph styling}

...then use special classes for...well...special paragraphs (first, scenebreak, noindent, etc). It also makes for a much cleaner file and easier to see where there is special styling when you are editing in code view.

FWIW...

I was trying to be explicit, not saying that that is exactly how it should be done.

You said that things like scene break are content and should be done in html and not css. I just wanted to clarify what you meant.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by Barty

I was trying to be explicit, not saying that that is exactly how it should be done.

You said that things like scene break are content and should be done in html and not css. I just wanted to clarify what you meant.

Sorry, I wasn't actually replying to your question, just the use of <p class="normal">

The way I understand it, identifying a paragraph as the "first" or a "scenebreak" is purely structural. You are defining that paragraph's function. There is no requirement whatsoever to have the style of those paragraphs any different than any other paragraph. However, if you choose to style them differently (as I do), then it is easily accomplished by updating the CSS file.

Cheers,


edit - a little more complete answer:

Likewise using the <h> tags are structural...they define the function of a section header. Chapter heads should use one of those <h> tags rather than a <p class="h1"> class. When you want to change the style of the <h> then you do so in the CSS file.

Originally Posted by murg

These are actually content related, and better handled by HTML.

CSS is a formatting language and doesn't know about content.

P.S. The first paragraph/indented paragraph are kinda on the cusp of being content/formatting.

The style (how they appear; spacing vs no spacing between paragraphs, etc) should be customizable and not hardcoded. I've returned ebooks which do not easily allow me to fix bad formatting because they don't use CSS.

For me, the bottom line is that I don't care how a publisher wants things to look. I want things to look how I prefer them to look. This applies to novels; I can appreciate that some books need special layout throughout.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by Colerson

The style (how they appear; spacing vs no spacing between paragraphs, etc) should be customizable and not hardcoded. I've returned ebooks which do not easily allow me to fix bad formatting because they don't use CSS.

For me, the bottom line is that I don't care how a publisher wants things to look. I want things to look how I prefer them to look. This applies to novels; I can appreciate that some books need special layout throughout.

Very true. Unfortunately a lot of that has to do with the reader/app functionality rather than the HTML coding. Readers/apps that don't allow the user to override the publisher settings are, in my opinion, useless. I like to style my books a certain way - and it is usually to repair a very bad coding attempt by the publisher/author. I've found that Marvin does a great job at that. I also tend to clean up the gnarly css code on most books I read (because I can)... Marvin allows me to choose publisher's settings for those books.

Unfortunately, as long as there are the great unwashed masses that continue to use the substandard readers/apps, there won't be much pressure for developers to provide a better product.

Cheers,

[JSWolf]

A lot of Android ePub reading apps tend to do too much overriding so there is little chance of being able to read as the XML/CSS dictates. It's like tossing out the CSS and letting the XML flounder. I know there are a lot of eBooks that could use some editing, but tossing out the CSS is not a way to do it.

[Cajun]

I rarely have a problem, but when I do it is annoying, I agree. For me a Kindle would not be a solution. I spend a few minutes, to modify the text with my Kobo and that's it, I read. If I can't modify, I send a note to the author and publisher, then read.

Having insight into design, sometimes over design might be an issue. I'm wondering if the designers are using the eReaders they are imposing the designs on...

[Sirtel]

For me, the problem with unsuitable formatting grew so irksome that I stopped downloading books directly to my kindles. I modify all my books in Calibre until they look exactly the way I want, and then sideload them. Generally it takes a few minutes or less to fix each book. I admit I'm extremely picky in that regard, but paper books usually did not have problems with things like indents, line and paragraph spacing, font etc. So it bothers me exceedingly when I encounter those issues in e-books.

[icallaci]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

For me, the problem with unsuitable formatting grew so irksome that I stopped downloading books directly to my kindles. I modify all my books in Calibre until they look exactly the way I want, and then sideload them. Generally it takes a few minutes or less to fix each book. I admit I'm extremely picky in that regard, but paper books usually did not have problems with things like indents, line and paragraph spacing, font etc. So it bothers me exceedingly when I encounter those issues in e-books.

I've become so sensitive to poor formatting in ebooks that I now notice some of the same problems in printed books! I never noticed these problems in printed books prior to reading (and fixing) ebooks.