Text cut off on right/left on full screen option despite fix

[Katsunami]

Hi

I'm running firmware version 4.7.10413 on a Kobo Aura one.

If text is cursive, some letters such as the f are cut off when they are at the end or beginning of a line. This is despite having the kobo_extra.css fix in place, with the following lines:

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

Does something need to be changed for this firmware? In the past, with older firmwares, the cut off text was fixed with these css overrides. (I prefer to not patch the reader firmware itself.)

Thanks for your time

[PeterT]

Disable full screen mode.

[JSWolf]

You'll need to go into the Kobo developer's forum and get the patches and a copy of the firmware for your KA1. Then you can patch to fix the full screen problem you are having with kepub.

[Katsunami]

WTH....

One person suggests turning off the full screen option, which would decrease the amount of text on screen to the point that I could actually just use my old KPW1, and the other suggests installing patches, which I specifically stated I don't want to do.

Let me rephrase the question.

Has something changed in recent firmwares, which has broken the above CSS-code in some way, and if so, does someone know the solution?

[JSWolf]

I gave the solution. Patches.

You want patch_name = `Fix three KePub fullScreenReading bugs` in libnickel.so.1.0.0.patch.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

WTH....

One person suggests turning off the full screen option, which would decrease the amount of text on screen to the point that I could actually just use my old KPW1, and the other suggests installing patches, which I specifically stated I don't want to do.

Let me rephrase the question.

Has something changed in recent firmwares, which has broken the above CSS-code in some way, and if so, does someone know the solution?

Not that I have heard of. To the best of my knowledge, the only way to fix the cut-off characters reliably was to use the patch. But, if there might be some discussion in the patch thread that indicates what changed. Or comparing the patches from the last time this worked to now might show what has changed.

Also, you might want to check a recent book sent to make sure the CSS was added. I don't use this function of the driver myself, so if it was broken somehow, I probably wouldn't notice. Or, maybe you disabled the option at some point.

Other than that, try fiddling with the padding and see if making it a bit bigger helps.

[Katsunami]

Thanks, David. I've only seen this issue with one book, and only because it has some chapters in cursive (which they should be), so they fill the screen. I'll check the options in Calibre and resend a book, and see what happens. I've not changed my calibre options in ages, but I do update it, and the plugins regularly.

[rashkae]

What do you mean cursive? A custom embedded font?

You might have to increase the left and right padding values. The value of 0.2em is used in the patches, (and my .css example) simply because that seems to be enough margin to avoid the problem, but other fonts might need more.

My css is a little different from yours.. I haven't examined in detail to see what the difference would be, but I use:

body {
margin: 0 !important;
padding: 0 !important;
}

body>div {
padding-left: 0.2em !important;
padding-right: 0.2em !important;
}

And for those suggesting that patches are the answer, pls take a moment to actually read the patches and see what it actually does?

[JSWolf]

One reason the patches are the answer is that you then don't need extra CSS. It's just fixed on the Reader.

There are other things you can fix/change with kepub with the patches.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by rashkae

What do you mean cursive? A custom embedded font?

Sorry

Just italics. I just translated the Dutch word into English by mistake.

[GeoffR]

There are some books where the 0.2em in this stylesheet modification isn't enough:

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

I think the most common case would be where the font-size at the paragraph level is set much larger than 1em / 100%. This can happen if you convert the book format with Calibre's "Font Size Rescaling" conversion option enabled, so make sure that option is turned off.

However some publishers used Calibre to create the original book, and so the font-sizes might have been rescaled already. In that case all you can really do is increase the padding in the stylesheet modification above to compensate. 50% increase (0.2em to 0.3em) should be enough in most cases, but sometimes 100% (0.2em to 0.4em) might be needed. I don't know any automatic way to reverse the effects of font size rescaling, and it can be quite a bit of work to do it manually.

(There can be other issues with some books too, such as embedded fonts with highly sloped italics, or the publisher has done something stupid like set negative left/right margins on paragraphs.)

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Sorry

Just italics. I just translated the Dutch word into English by mistake.

And you say the it cuts off Left side as well as right? What you describe sounds like the problem that shows when the body margin is not 0.. but that would mean your css override is not working.

Try copying the book file off of the Kobo itself, rename the file extension to .zip. extract it, and examine the css file directly to make sure the Kobo driver successfully appended the code.

Edit: On second thought,if that were the case, it would affect all the text in the book, not only the italics paragraphs. Nothing more to do but look at the actually css of the paragraphs in involved to see what's going on. I'm Liking Geoffr's theory of negative margins. In the original book, a margin in the body of the text, and a negative margin on the italicized paragrah, could have been used to make that text appear wider than the rest. But forcing the body margin to 0 would then push the negative paragraph margins off the page.

[GeoffR]

To be practical, if the problem only occurs with the occasional book then the easiest work-around might just be to select a different font to read those books, one that has fairly upright italics and doesn't have characters with large side-bearings. (the built-in Amasis font could be a good choice.)

[Katsunami]

Thanks all. Today I'm going to check if the driver actually appends the CSS. I've seen the problem only with one book lately, and only because it has entire chapters in italic (part introductions). If it's one book in a long while that might have this problem, and everything else is working fine, I'm not going to change anything.