kepub vs epub render engines

[Simboubou]

That thread looks really interesting, and I'd really like to go better spacing, hyphenation and images rendering in my books.

But I'm afraid reading all this will make me see things I don't see now and will never be able to unsee.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by stumped

I compromise: I see the ADE page numbers displayed in calibre library ( via the count pages plug in) so that I know how big a book is before i transfer it to Kobo. I then have no need so see silly little ADE numbers appearing on the right side of my reader screens.

I like the kepub numbers, I always read at the same font size etc setting so I have a pretty good idea of now long it takes to read say 50 kepub "pages" on my device settings
( also, its roughly double the ADE value on my device settings, which is easy to remember - a 250 ADE page book is about 500 kepub pages

I think it's silly to have the page numbers on the right turned on. So turn them off. If you don't have the ePub footer turned on, you can get the page numbers by tapping to bring up the menu. So you can see how much you've read and total page numbers.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by stumped

time left in chapter & such like don't work for me because I abuse the algorithms by skip scanning boring sections.
pages left in chapter , however defined & calculated, is great. it helps decide whether to stop reading at sleep time or go for "just one more" chapter.
I aim to complete a chapter, then I will turn one page more just to see how long the next one is, before bookmarking and closing.

You don't need to set a bookmark before you put your Kobo to sleep. It will wake where you left off.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

OMG!
I couldn't do that! I need to reach a section where there's a clear structural break in the story, otherwise I can't stop.

I agree. If I stop in the middle of a chapter, I stop at the first paragraph on a page. So I know exactly where to continue reading.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I agree. If I stop in the middle of a chapter, I stop at the first paragraph on a page. So I know exactly where to continue reading.

If I stop in the middle of a chapter, I tend to turn it back a few pages so I can ensure I know where I left off next time.

[mirage]

Personally, I prefer screens to print equivalent page numbers or percentage. That's if the count is somewhat close to exact and adjusts to changes in font size, line spacing, margins, etc. If I'm reading an ebook it has screens, not pages. But that's me, not anybody else. Another thing I like is total word count. It can be misleading, particularly in a non-fiction book with lots of notes or any book with lengthy forewards or afterwards, but it's a nice thing to have a sense of.

On a different rendering engine note, I noticed that on my just arrived Libra H2O, an epub of a particular book ignores my line spacing wishes on the device. But if I convert it to a kepub.epub, the line spacing I'm looking for is honored. I checked and see that the css for this book has line-height set in all the p classes. So the epub rendering engine appears not to overrule the css in that case, where the kepub engine does. Can anyone confirm this?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by mirage

On a different rendering engine note, I noticed that on my just arrived Libra H2O, an epub of a particular book ignores my line spacing wishes on the device. But if I convert it to a kepub.epub, the line spacing I'm looking for is honored. I checked and see that the css for this book has line-height set in all the p classes. So the epub rendering engine appears not to overrule the css in that case, where the kepub engine does. Can anyone confirm this?

Yes. Both the epub (Adobe) and kepub (Access) rendering engines use override CSS statements built into the firmware for when you use the [Aa] sliders, but they're not the same.

The kepub one is more aggressive in general than the epub one.
Specifically for line-height:

epub: body {line-height: %1 !important;}
kepub: body, p { line-height: %1 !important; }

There are also epub/kepub differences for overriding font-family and text-align (more info available if you want it).

If these differences are going to cause you a problem (and you want to go down this track) there are various kobopatches available to tweak the overrides to your preferences.

[mirage]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Yes. Both the epub (Adobe) and kepub (Access) rendering engines use override CSS statements built into the firmware for when you use the [Aa] sliders, but they're not the same.

The kepub one is more aggressive in general than the epub one.
Specifically for line-height:

epub: body {line-height: %1 !important;}
kepub: body, p { line-height: %1 !important; }

There are also epub/kepub differences for overriding font-family and text-align (more info available if you want it).

If these differences are going to cause you a problem (and you want to go down this track) there are various kobopatches available to tweak the overrides to your preferences.

Thanks! At your suggestion about this, I just looked through the patch yaml files and see what would need to be done.