The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[DNSB]

Probably since everyone has their own idea of what a perfectly formatted ebook looks like and most publishers have to deal with trying to make an ePub ebook look good on multiple devices with renderers that often have widely different interpretations of the ePub standard.

Heck, even Amazon who have proprietary ebooks can and do have issues with attempting to make their converted ebooks look good on everything from a small smartphone to a 32" high res monitor despite their fondness for media queries.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Probably since everyone has their own idea of what a perfectly formatted ebook looks like and most publishers have to deal with trying to make an ePub ebook look good on multiple devices with renderers that often have widely different interpretations of the ePub standard.

Heck, even Amazon who have proprietary ebooks can and do have issues with attempting to make their converted ebooks look good on everything from a small smartphone to a 32" high res monitor despite their fondness for media queries.

One option that might please people is to include many formatting options on the ereader itself (much like with EPUBs you can usually choose the typeface and size) whether it is a physical device or a program. That way users can easily format the ebooks on the device as they desire. Some people prefer paragraphs with a first-line indent, and others (like me) prefer block paragraphs with a blank line after each paragraph.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

One option that might please people is to include many formatting options on the ereader itself (much like with EPUBs you can usually choose the typeface and size) whether it is a physical device or a program. That way users can easily format the ebooks on the device as they desire. Some people prefer paragraphs with a first-line indent, and others (like me) prefer block paragraphs with a blank line after each paragraph.

That may work for the few who want to play with settings on their renderer. Considering the number of people who swear that <insert Android renderer of your choice) is the greatest way of reading ebooks while I tend to look at almost all Android renderers and go "Out of the box, their CSS support is non-existent".

[ownedbycats]

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Attachment 213937

So many questions... Let me try guess the answers.

Goodreads
AI Bot
Book not written yet.

Am I close @ownedbycats ?

[ownedbycats]

Goodreads.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

That may work for the few who want to play with settings on their renderer. Considering the number of people who swear that <insert Android renderer of your choice) is the greatest way of reading ebooks while I tend to look at almost all Android renderers and go "Out of the box, their CSS support is non-existent".

KOReader has a zillion settings and many people don't like it for just this reason - they claim it's too convoluted and confusing. So no, adding a ton of settings to a renderer is still not going to please many people.

The fact is, there is no pleasing everyone and there will never be just one way of doing things.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

To me, this is an argument for direct formatting in some cases in an ebook. Why not just enter the uppercase letter manually? I wonder if it is due to some typefaces not being available on the ereader so a substitute typeface replaced it?

It would have been uppercase letters originally.

No, it's just bad design/production. It could have been done with the capitals from the source. Someone added something without a transform CSS for first letter capitals, fixed it the wrong way (manually direct formatted to LC), then someone removed the initial stuff and it wasn't proof read.

They broke 1st rule of production: NEVER directly edit the source in the HTML, use CSS transforms, ONLY edit content in the source!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I agree about the formatting of eBook properly. Issues like page sizes should be a non-issue with ebooks, and other things (like specific typefaces) shouldn't be hard encoded. Instead, just code in a general typeface (serif or san serif) and let the user choose the specific typeface and size (which seems to be the case with EPUB ebooks).

When I was referring to Basic HTML, part of it meant no CSS. I've looked into CSS and it is overly complicated. It has a syntax that is unrelated to regular HTML, which makes it confusing to handcode. I suspect that CSS was designed to not be handcoded, but to be created using an intermediary program.

I don't mind some embedded fonts such as a handwriting font. But don't embed the base font as what's used in most pBooks don't work well enough on eInk.

Also, stop using these crap programs that generate terrible code such as Vellum and Kindle Create.

And also stop using a CSS that's full of unused classes. It takes less then a minute to remove all unused classes.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Add another pet peeve. I purchased an ebook and virtually every chapter had no capital letters in the first line of the first paragraph. I suspect the original was supposed to use a small caps block but it was removed without correcting the capitalization.

"what do you mean that alexander is not returning?" asked sarah Grey?

I don't like redundant code that makes lower case into uppercase. There's no need for that. Just uppercase the text in the HTML.

[JSWolf]

Here's yet another odd title. Now we are getting titles with review blurbs.

Cloud Cuckoo Land: the new novel and Sunday Times bestseller from the author of All the Light We Cannot See

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Probably since everyone has their own idea of what a perfectly formatted ebook looks like and most publishers have to deal with trying to make an ePub ebook look good on multiple devices with renderers that often have widely different interpretations of the ePub standard.

Heck, even Amazon who have proprietary ebooks can and do have issues with attempting to make their converted ebooks look good on everything from a small smartphone to a 32" high res monitor despite their fondness for media queries.

But there are some rules that work.

Keep the base font size at 1em and offset text as well.
Do not embed a rubbish font to replace the base font.
Do not embed any fonts that does not look good on eInk.
Do not waste too much space for the chapter header.
Do not set right/left margins.
Do not set a line-height.
Make the code streamlined so there is less chance of a problem.
If you do use a program that generates rubbish code, hand fix the mess you made.
No paragraph spaces.
Proper indents not to small or too large (I prefer 1.2em).
Use em and not px, %, or other measurement where appropriate.
No colored text.
No background image or color.
For offset text, use a proper <blockquote>.
For a standard paragraph, use a plain <p>.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

KOReader has a zillion settings and many people don't like it for just this reason - they claim it's too convoluted and confusing. So no, adding a ton of settings to a renderer is still not going to please many people.

The fact is, there is no pleasing everyone and there will never be just one way of doing things.

I think the way to sort that problem is to have a default setting that hides most of these options. Make it easy to turn them on for those that want.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But there are some rules that work.

Keep the base font size at 1em and offset text as well.
Do not embed a rubbish font to replace the base font.
Do not embed any fonts that does not look good on eInk.
Do not waste too much space for the chapter header.
Do not set right/left margins.
Do not set a line-height.
Make the code streamlined so there is less chance of a problem.
If you do use a program that generates rubbish code, hand fix the mess you made.

Yes, to all of that, and:
No CSS defined white-space
No blank lines, use top or bottom margin in the CSS for a suitable header or paragraph.
Any space above the first element in a file should use padding-top, not margin-top as some renderers strip margin-top on first element.
Use CSS with a <p tag, not a <blockquote
never use inches, mm, cm.
never use px on margins and font sizes
No coloured body or header text.
No coloured backgrounds.
No external content.

The no left & right margins is generally. Some things like lists, lyrics/poetry, quotations, marginalia, preambles might .

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I don't like redundant code that makes lower case into uppercase. There's no need for that. Just uppercase the text in the HTML.

No, that messes up screenreaders and makes them read out each letter.