Inability to Center Text in EPUBs

[icearch]

Glad you solved your problem.

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

it is displaying centered on Calibre's Ebook Viewer, it's just not displaying centered on my ereader.

This is not helping at all, you are just repeating your problem, not actually show others the detail.

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I've thought about it and what I will do is create and post a test EPUB that shows the issue so that others can examine it.

That's the way to do, show us the html and css code, or we can do little.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Are you using Styles in LibreOffice? If not, then the styling and output/conversion is going to be messy.

Yes, I use styles. I've found that they are essential in LibreOffice to ensure consistent formatting, and they also make it easy to make global-wide changes. The only time I do direct formatting are in cases where it doesn't make sense to create a style, such as to make one word italic (although I could create a character style if I chose).

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by icearch

Glad you solved your problem.




This is not helping at all, you are just repeating your problem, not actually show others the detail.



That's the way to do, show us the html and css code, or we can do little.

Attached is an ebook I had an issue with, it was generated using LibreOffice's Export to EPUB option. I just replaced all of the characters in the text with "x" and reduced it to a few pages:

Test for Sending - Solitaire1.epub

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

Attached is an ebook I had an issue with, it was generated using LibreOffice's Export to EPUB option. I just replaced all of the characters in the text with "x" and reduced it to a few pages:

Attachment 223571

What device are you trying to read this on? It is not pretty but the text is centred on a Kobo and a Kindle ereader. When I ran it through epubcheck, it was not happy with some of the stylesheet entries so I did some cleanup, converted those inch measurements to em units and removed the font-family entries.

I've attached the modified ePub and two screenshots to this message.

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

Attached is an ebook I had an issue with, it was generated using LibreOffice's Export to EPUB option. I just replaced all of the characters in the text with "x" and reduced it to a few pages:

Attachment 223571

In addition to the changes by DNSB, you could (should) opt to also clean out the excess code through the body of the novel. It will be much easier to read and maintain. Using correct heading tags, using semantically correct tags, rather then everything being "calibre*".

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by DNSB

What device are you trying to read this on? It is not pretty but the text is centred on a Kobo and a Kindle ereader. When I ran it through epubcheck, it was not happy with some of the stylesheet entries so I did some cleanup, converted those inch measurements to em units and removed the font-family entries.

I've attached the modified ePub and two screenshots to this message.

My device is a Nook Glowlight 4 (NG4). I checked the modified EPUB that you sent on my NG4 and the text that is supposed to be centered will be centered as long as I set the justification to "Auto." If the justification is turned off (so the text is ragged right) or is turned on then the text won't be centered with ebooks created with LibreOffice. I was also able alter the text size, which was something I couldn't do with the ebook I posted.

It appears that is the reason for the issues I had when it comes to EPUBs generated by LibreOffice: The way that it creates the EPUBs. Now that I know the source of the issue I will be able to deal with it. Thanks to everyone for their assistance.

[icearch]

To some of your questions:

Why you can't set font size?

Beacuse you wrap basically every text in a span that set font-size to 9pt, if your reader can't override css, that's why you can't change font size.

As to your centering problem, I suspect it have something to do with the body0 class. If you are using english, you can just delete it all.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by icearch

To some of your questions:

Why you can't set font size?

Beacuse you wrap basically every text in a span that set font-size to 9pt, if your reader can't override css, that's why you can't change font size.

As to your centering problem, I suspect it have something to do with the body0 class. If you are using english, you can just delete it all.

I think the issues I've had are because my ereader (Nook Glowlight 4) has issues with the way LibreOffice writes the code for EPUBs. As an example, it will center text marked to be centered as long as the justification is set to Auto. I've not had these issues with ebooks from Project Gutenberg and with commercial ebooks. Basically, it seems like it was the software I was using to make my EPUBs was the source of the problem.

[icearch]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I think the issues I've had are because my ereader (Nook Glowlight 4) has issues with the way LibreOffice writes the code for EPUBs. As an example, it will center text marked to be centered as long as the justification is set to Auto. I've not had these issues with ebooks from Project Gutenberg and with commercial ebooks. Basically, it seems like it was the software I was using to make my EPUBs was the source of the problem.

You repeat your problem again, What I just post is to tell you why it possibly happened.

To avold your problem, you need to work on the style sheet in the word process software i.e. LibreOffice. You need to stop directly adding style to text, and try to find a way to clear any excess style when converting.

[Quoth]

Edit only ODT.
Extra Save As as Word 2007 docx (not any later version)
Add to Calibre and convert. As long as the LO styles are sane the css is 1:1.
Works on Nook Simple Touch, Binatone, Sony PRS350, T1 & T2, and modern Kobo.
Insert images anchored as character in a centred text paragraph to centre.

Never directly format. Only styles.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I changed the justification setting to ragged right and the items that are supposed to be centered still aren't on my ereader.

Don't change the justification setting to anything. Turn it off.

[JSWolf]

Where are you getting these eBooks that you edit in LibraOffice? Why are you using LibraOffice when calibre and Sigil are both better?

[PeterT]

See post 7 where it's started they are self written stories

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Where are you getting these eBooks that you edit in LibraOffice? Why are you using LibraOffice when calibre and Sigil are both better?

I used LibreOffice because I expected it would be as easy to make an EPUB as was to make a PDF. That turned out to be wrong.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I used LibreOffice because I expected it would be as easy to make an EPUB as was to make a PDF. That turned out to be wrong.

lol

It’s not inherently more difficult to make an epub, than a pdf. It’s as easy as making a selection on your save-as. What is more involved is deciding how much of a PITA you want to make for your users/readers/customers. PDF is absolutely horrible to read. ePub has a few quirks but they are mostly because of the reading system not adhering to the standards. So you simply need to make sure your “process” creates the ePub file best suited to tame your target devices quirks.

Learning a different way to do things is inherently… different. Once you learn it, it should take no more than a couple minutes to create a good ePub. After awhile you can take a look at any level of code bloat created by automated software and get it cleaned up. It now takes me about 15-20 minutes to clean some of the most atrocious bloat and have an excellent ePub for my reader/device/app of choice.