Why do different books render differently in the viewer?

[GarryB123]

Different books in my library render differently in the viewer. For example in the two attached images the font weight and line spacing are different with these two books; why is that when I have chosen the same font size in settings? I prefer the heavier weight font and tighter line spacing. Is there a way I can force all books to display the same font, font weight, line spacing, etc.? I have experimented a little with style-sheets but must not have been doing something properly because I could not affect the viewer display. Thank you.

[kovidgoyal]

Books have their own internal styles. You need to give your stylesheet rules enoughr priority to override those, which you can do by using !important. But in general if you want to harmonise the look and feel of books then best way to do so is via conversion.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by GarryB123

Different books in my library render differently in the viewer. For example in the two attached images the font weight and line spacing are different with these two books; why is that when I have chosen the same font size in settings? I prefer the heavier weight font and tighter line spacing. Is there a way I can force all books to display the same font, font weight, line spacing, etc.? I have experimented a little with style-sheets but must not have been doing something properly because I could not affect the viewer display. Thank you.

The CSS is different enough that the font used and the line height are not the same. You can use the editor to remove any embedded fonts and line height found in the CSS. That would allow you to specify the same font and have the same line height.

[GarryB123]

Thank you Kovid and JSWolf

In the editor, I copied the CSS from the book that looked good to me, and pasted it in place of the CSS in the book I didn't like the look of. It worked! I don't know if this was the right thing to do but it worked; and was easy. Was that the wrong way to go about standardizing a look and feel? Could it mess something up?

Is there a tutorial to accomplish a standard look and feel using conversion?

Thank you for helping me this far. What a powerful program this is.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by GarryB123

Thank you Kovid and JSWolf

In the editor, I copied the CSS from the book that looked good to me, and pasted it in place of the CSS in the book I didn't like the look of. It worked! I don't know if this was the right thing to do but it worked; and was easy. Was that the wrong way to go about standardizing a look and feel? Could it mess something up?

It is a very good way to screwup the look and feel. If you look in the CSS, you'll see some apply the basic paragraph formatting to the p tag and then modify that for the variant paragraph types which others use separate classes for paragraph types as an example. Chapter headers, section breaks, etc. are also going to be very susceptible to damage.

Originally Posted by GarryB123

Is there a tutorial to accomplish a standard look and feel using conversion?

Not that I've ever seen. You might want to take a look at some the stylesheets in the Sigil, epub and workshop forums. One sample thread is Stylesheet examples? in the Sigil forum. One warning is that stylesheets tend to be highly personal reflecting the user's approach to formatting so don't be afraid to start collecting snippets into your own personal stylesheet.

Basically, take a backup copy of your epub, edit the stylesheet and see what it looks like (I'd suggest either Sigil or calibre' editor -- I use both). It won't blowup your computer and it's a great way to learn.

I was going to suggest Liz Castro's Pigs, Gourds and Wikis site which was one of my favourites years back for information on editing ebooks but it seems she has moved on to Catalan independence and that site is pretty much moribund though much of the content is still available through searching.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by GarryB123

Thank you Kovid and JSWolf

In the editor, I copied the CSS from the book that looked good to me, and pasted it in place of the CSS in the book I didn't like the look of. It worked! I don't know if this was the right thing to do but it worked; and was easy. Was that the wrong way to go about standardizing a look and feel? Could it mess something up?

Is there a tutorial to accomplish a standard look and feel using conversion?

Thank you for helping me this far. What a powerful program this is.

There is NOT one stylesheet to rule them all.
Style sheets are paired (matched) to the book that they were made for.

Even, the ones used by major publishers get misused (because the book formatting person does not understand how to apply the listed styles or there are custom additions for that book). Toss in, users like us, who clean unused styles. apply the cleaned one to a book that has custom additions and

[ps67]

I can assure that it is not so difficult to learn a bit of css/html so You can edit Your books in the way You like. I bought my Kindle when I was 50 years old and I knew nothing about css/html, now I am able to do some basic changes in my books, so seldom I am unsatisfied with them.

And preferences in book formatting are pretty individual: this is the reason way in this forum there are some people (like me) the reformat the books they buy.

[JSWolf]

Garry if you attach an ePub to a post in this thread that you would like to have modified to look better, I'll do it for you. Then you can take the original and the one I modified and using the Calibre editor, you can do a compare and see what sort of changes I made. That's one way to start learning HTML/CSS.

[GarryB123]

Thank you all! I'll respond shortly after I work more on this.

[PeterT]

Just be careful with what content you do post. Public Domain only

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by GarryB123

Thank you all! I'll respond shortly after I work more on this.

Make sure the book is public domain or creative commons.

[GarryB123]

Originally Posted by DNSB

It is a very good way to screwup the look and feel.

Oops. I got lucky on that one; they were two simple books with simple style sheets.

Originally Posted by DNSB

Basically, take a backup copy of your epub, edit the stylesheet and see what it looks like (I'd suggest either Sigil or calibre' editor -- I use both). It won't blowup your computer and it's a great way to learn.

Thanks. I'm doing this. Very cool. I'm finding sometimes items are nested and applying a font size to one element can have unexpected results depending on prior definitions. Cool anyway.

[GarryB123]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Just be careful with what content you do post. Public Domain only

Indeed. Thank you.

[GarryB123]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Make sure the book is public domain or creative commons.

Indeed. Thank you.

[GarryB123]

Originally Posted by theducks

There is NOT one stylesheet to rule them all.
Style sheets are paired (matched) to the book that they were made for

I'm learning so, and it makes sense. I need to leave the bulk of the CSS as is and only change enough to make it look as I want.