New to Kobo: How to start?

[kyrilson]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Much the same here. I would rather spend the minutes required to clean up an ebook to match my preferences than to tweak with the settings while reading. One recent example being a book from BookBale where the paragraph formatting used a line height of 1.6 and a blank line between each paragraph while also using indents. Took about 2 minutes to remove the line height and the gap between paragraphs and made my reading experience more pleasant.

How do you all do this tweaking? I've tried the editor in Calibre, but it always ends up a disaster whenever I try to edit things. Is there a workflow that works best for this kind of thing?

[Sirtel]

I do it in the Calibre editor. The very first thing I do is delete unused css styles and merge the duplicate ones; the rest depends on the book and what I want to change in its formatting. I've never had it end in a disaster, or at least I don't remember such happening; why should it?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by kyrilson

How do you all do this tweaking? I've tried the editor in Calibre, but it always ends up a disaster whenever I try to edit things. Is there a workflow that works best for this kind of thing?

Much as @Sirtel except that I use Sigil as my main editor reserving calibre's ebook editor for some tasks that it does better. Basically, I work on a copy of the original document until I've finished editing.

I've run into issues such as css that has default values set for empty div and span tags for instance which caused issues when the empty tags were removed. Other issues were idiot creators who used inconsistent inline styles for paragraphs, mostly due to not using styles correctly in the word processor used to create the original document.

Over the years, I can only think of two ebooks where I sent the edited result to the bitbucket and started work on another copy of the original file.

One item is that I have edited quite a few ebooks over the years and have a collection of saved searches I use for most clean up tasks. One set for Vellum for instance makes cleaning up the average Vellum created ebook an almost effortless process.

[John F]

Originally Posted by kyrilson

How do you all do this tweaking? I've tried the editor in Calibre, but it always ends up a disaster whenever I try to edit things. Is there a workflow that works best for this kind of thing?

Are you opposed to doing conversion? 1 or 2 button presses (after initial setup) and I get the look I want. I do do some editing to reduce the size of the ebook.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by John F

Are you opposed to doing conversion? 1 or 2 button presses (after initial setup) and I get the look I want.

This doesn't always work, or removes too much stuff. You may be satisfied with the results, I'm usually not. That's why I started editing.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by John F

Are you opposed to doing conversion? 1 or 2 button presses (after initial setup) and I get the look I want. I do do some editing to reduce the size of the ebook.

For me, conversion rarely gives me a book layout that I prefer.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

This doesn't always work, or removes too much stuff. You may be satisfied with the results, I'm usually not. That's why I started editing.

Sorry I wasn't clear. I am satisfied. Actually, satisfied is putting it mildly.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Yes, the footnote popup window is only available for KEPUB, as is the ability to rapidly turn pages. With EPUB, you're stuck with 1 tap/click = 1 page turned.

I don't read that fast to need to rapidly turn pages.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

That is not what I was referring to. I meant that with EPubs, it could be difficult to actually get a footnote to activate, due to the small tap sensitive area.

Footnotes have gotten a lot better with ePub. I don't know how good it is with the tiny tap zones from most eBooks with footnotes. I always edit them to be larger.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

I'd use kepub. I tend to just want to read and not edit html.

But even with KePub, you still need to edit as the formatting is not going to magically be fixed just by using KePub.

One of the problems with such a small tap zone is that the footnote can be missed regardless of KePub or ePub.

[JSWolf]

There is one major advantage to ePub over KePub. Kobo in their infinite wisdom decided to break monospace fonts. So if an eBook uses monospace, it won't display properly. But with ePub, all you have to do is find a monospace font family you like and change the internal name to Courier for the font family. Put the fonts in the fonts directory and you'll be able to easily use monospace fonts with ePub.

With KePub, you have to embed a monospace font.

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But even with KePub, you still need to edit as the formatting is not going to magically be fixed just by using KePub.

...

How about that, I'm a magician.

[kyrilson]

Ok, an editing question for the experts. I don’t like how large the space is between the umm, what’s it called… the break between scenes? As shown in the pic below. But I do like the line spacing and paragraph spacing just fine. Is there a way for me to decrease the space between “scenes” like the one shown?
Attachment 204514

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by kyrilson

Ok, an editing question for the experts. I don’t like how large the space is between the umm, what’s it called… the break between scenes? As shown in the pic below. But I do like the line spacing and paragraph spacing just fine. Is there a way for me to decrease the space between “scenes” like the one shown?

Of course. You'll have to edit the scene break code in the book.

Sorry, can't see your pic. Use the paperclip icon to attach it.

[kyrilson]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Of course. You'll have to edit the scene break code in the book.

Sorry, can't see your pic. Use the paperclip icon to attach it.

Hmm, I went back and edited it to add as a file instead of pic. Maybe that worked?