The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Renate]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And how does that solve any problems? It just creates new problems.

I really don't understand what you're objecting to.
Your ereader app should have a default sane CSS.
Reading plain text in my chosen font with justified layout is fine with me.
I'm not saying that I do this to all books, just books with egregiously offensive style.

[theducks]

No CSS, leaves the work at the mercy of the device DEFAULTS
H1 default on a 6" device is limited; 'Chapter 42' probably won't fit.
Typically I spend less than 5 minutes tuning the CSS.
Calibre and Sigil both have a Jump to (style sheet location) for the class= selected.

OTOH EPUB 3 sometimes Nests so many tags, that finding the one that is making you unhappy, can be a challenge.

The 'Inspector' tool (part of the Editor) can help track things down

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Renate

I really don't understand what you're objecting to.
Your ereader app should have a default sane CSS.
Reading plain text in my chosen font with justified layout is fine with me.
I'm not saying that I do this to all books, just books with egregiously offensive style.

Default sane CSS? Are you living in the same world as the rest of us?

Basically, I've found renderers come in two flavours. One that defaults to the CSS defaults which aren't all that well defined or useful and tend to give a pretty ugly page display and the other that has it's own builtin CSS and very often make it a pain to try to use the epub's builtin CSS.

An example of the first type would be Adobe's ADE and it's derivatives, an example of the second type would be Moon+ and all too many other Android renderers.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Default sane CSS? Are you living in the same world as the rest of us?

Basically, I've found renderers come in two flavours. One that defaults to the CSS defaults which aren't all that well defined or useful and tend to give a pretty ugly page display and the other that has it's own builtin CSS and very often make it a pain to try to use the epub's builtin CSS.

An example of the first type would be Adobe's ADE and it's derivatives, an example of the second type would be Moon+ and all too many other Android renderers.

Lord almighty, I have a customer that is obsessed about how emdashes followed by text or quotation marks (closing broken-off speech, n'est ca pas?) will break away from the preceding word, in cheapie or free eReaders and will NOT. LET. IT. GO.

Did I tell her, get over MoonReader or the like? Yes. Did I say, this is highly unlikely to happen in Kindles, Fires, Books (in iOS), Nook, et al? Yes.

Has that solved the "problem," NO it has not.

Honestly, I'm on the verge of screaming about it.

[shrug]

Hitch

[Renate]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Default sane CSS? Are you living in the same world as the rest of us?

Probably not.
In my reader app that I wrote I also wrote the default CSS.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Renate

Probably not.
In my reader app that I wrote I also wrote the default CSS.

Sure, you can do that for a custom reading program. But most won't be using a custom program. They'll be using whatever they are using and it won't work well if you dump the CSS.

Not only would it look ugly, but some necessary formatting may not be visible such as section breaks and offset text.

[ownedbycats]

also, I think most of us aren't writing a custom-written reader....

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

also, I think most of us aren't writing a custom-written reader....

Agreed!

Hitch

[ownedbycats]

I found a fanfiction. The title and summary were both in English and interesting. I clicked it... the fic itself was in, I think, Russian.

I'm a little confused of the thought process of the author.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

II clicked it... the fic itself was in, I think, Russian.

I'm a little confused of the thought process of the author.

Yes, though Russian isn't the only language that St Cyril's followers inflicted that alphabet on. Tsar Peter the Great wanted to change to transliterated Roman.

[ownedbycats]

Reading a cozy mystery. The culprit turned out to be a character who literally just started existing the moment he was revealed to be the culprit. There was zero indication before that page. WTF?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Reading a cozy mystery. The culprit turned out to be a character who literally just started existing the moment he was revealed to be the culprit. There was zero indication before that page. WTF?

It's regarded as a rule not to be broken that the guilty person must appear early in the book. There are rules you can break, when you learn how, but it's just stupid to break that one.

[ownedbycats]

honestly, the whole mystery was just kind of... all over the place. It almost feels like the author was writing before they figured it out themselves and just threw him in because none of the other suspects really made sense.

not self-published, either, so I'm surprised it got past editing.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

honestly, the whole mystery was just kind of... all over the place. It almost feels like the author was writing before they figured it out themselves and just threw him in because none of the other suspects really made sense.

not self-published, either, so I'm surprised it got past editing.

Crazy.
My theory on writing conventional Who Dunnit type (there is the Lt. Colombo kind also in books before WWII were the reader/viewer is told* and you read/watch how the sleuth solves it) is to write the start and end in any order (or the crime and solution) then fill in the motivations, red herrings, characters and storyline. The writer has to know who did it and what the crime is before really writing much at all.

[* A variation is the evil villain / politician etc who even the dogs in the street know is behind what ever it is and the Government has no proof and either doesn't do frames/assassinations or thinks that would create other problems so our plucky sleuth / spy / etc has to discredit or get proof that would put the villain away for life etc, even if like Al Capone the "proof" is for some unrelated crime]

Having someone new at the end as the criminal would be like a 40 chapter romance where at the altar one party runs off with a character never even hinted at. Or is suddenly killed by lightning strike etc on last page.

[ownedbycats]

I can't remember what it was called, but I vaguely remember a novel involving a teenager seeking medical emancipation (something about an organ donation for a family member, I think - this was maybe a decade ago I read it).

The entire plot was kind of nullified because the author had her get run over by a car at the end.