EPUB, KEBUP, ShmEPUB... confused. What's on my reader now?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

!important and kobo_extra.css have nothing to do with one another with regard to being destructive or not. "!important" *is* destructive.

!important means: "Use these values, whatever comes after." A cascading stylesheet overwrites values of properties, so if you set "X" to 15 on an element, and then you set it to 20 on the same element (further down in the same stylesheet, or in one linked after the one that has "X" at 15), then the value will be 20. If you set "X" to "15 !important" however, the value will not be overwritten. The "!important" value will be the one used, independently of where it appears in the stylesheet. (Maybe it can be overwritten by a later defined, new "!important" on the same element; I don't know that.)

The fatal flaw with this argument is that this is what !important is *supposed* to do . However, my comments are based on observed behaviour of what actual *did* happen on my Kobo devices 3 years ago. I tested the theory again today with a GloHD running fw 3.19.5761. The 'where-did-all-my-styles-go' problem in standard epubs when displayed on Kobo devices can still happen if the CSS contains !important. However, it's not 100% guaranteed to happen.

For example, the presence of the following rule doesn't trigger the problem

.small {
    font-size: 0.75em !important;
    display: inline
}

whereas simply reordering the rule does

.small {
    display: inline;
    font-size: 0.75em !important
}

I lack the patience to fully get to the bottom of it. Suffice to say getting rid of all occurrences of !important in all internal epub stylesheets cures the 'no styles' problem. This is good enough for me as anyone who understands CSS inheritance and cascading rules doesn't need it inside the epubs IMHO.

[Katsunami]

Weird. I set up the reader for full screen mode again, and put these lines in kobo_extra.css (and selected the option to modify CSS in the Kobo Touch Extended driver again):

body { margin: 0 !important; padding: 0 !important; }
div#book-columns { padding-left: 0.2em !important; padding-right: 0.2em !important; }

Then I removed all books, and reloaded them (as 'extended features' books; converted to KEPUB by the driver). Then I went to the reading settings screen, and enabled full screen mode, and after that, opened a book I knew had the font cut-off problems.

It still had the same problem. I paged back and forth, went from section to section, without anything changing. After that, I went back to the home screen, and opened another book that also had this problem.... and it was fixed. Back to the home screen again, and I opened the first book again: fixed as well. Now, at a first glance, every book seems to be fixed.

This is a behavior that is baffling to me. Why wouldn't a book be fixed, but then by switching to another one and back again, it suddenly is? And everything else is fixed as well?

This reminds me of the problem I have (had) with the Kindle Touch and Paperwhite when first setting those up years ago.

When I reset it to factory defaults, and then sideload books, there is *NO* way I can get custom page numbers as set by Count Pages to work. I first need to download a book directly on the reader, that has the Amazon "real page numbers" feature, and then open it. After going back to the homepage, each newly sideloaded book (but not the ones already on the reader) has the custom page numbers working, as set by Count Pages.

[GeoffR]

(I deleted my post because it probably just adds to the confusion. I don't have an Aura One and haven't used the firmware it is running, so I don't really know what is going on.)

[Katsunami]

Well, it does seem to be fixed. Every book I now open is displayed correctly (I've tried 5, up until now.)

The 0.2em in the second line is actually very welcome too, as it adds a bit of margin/padding to the left and right of the text, so it doesn't run right up to the edges. When set at the lowest settings, the margin is now perfect all around.