Justification in (i)Books

[AlanHK]

In all my books, I set justification in css as
p {text-align: justify;}
For most books, I do not embed a font, I just have:
body {font-family: serif;}

I have just noticed that in all the epubs I have on my iPad, viewing with Books (formerly iBooks), that the justification changes depending on which font I select from the GUI:

For Athelas, Georgia, San Francisco, New York, Seravek, Times New Roman:
these all now display as left-aligned.

For Charter, Iowan, Palatino: text is justified as intended.

For books with embedded fonts, justification seems to be correct.

I cannot see any user menu to change justification.

I haven't noticed this before, (I rarely read books on my iPad, just use it to test ePubs). The iPad was on iOS 12.4.1. I just checked for updates and installed 13.2, but no change in this issue.

So, is this a real bug? Or is my CSS responsible?

PS1

I found that in the system settings, Books has a "Full justification" toggle, which is turned on.
So that is even more weird, since Books is ignoring both that and the epub's CSS to make some fonts left justified.

I guess this is one of those "throw your hands up" and/or "pull out your hair" things about how Apple does things.


PS2
Found an old thread and a link to https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7666319
So, it seem Apple decides to force justification to left depending on the font size. At larger size all are left-aligned.
I would expect this to affect wider fonts first; but Times is narrower than Palatino but switches to left before Palatino does.

So, that confirms it: it's a "pull your hair out" thing.
Just grit your teeth and move on, to mix anatomic metaphors.

[AbominableDavid]

Originally Posted by AlanHK

So, it seem Apple decides to force justification to left depending on the font size. At larger size all are left-aligned.
I would expect this to affect wider fonts first; but Times is narrower than Palatino but switches to left before Palatino does.

So, that confirms it: it's a "pull your hair out" thing.
Just grit your teeth and move on, to mix anatomic metaphors.

Thank you for tracking this down. I had the same problem and fiddled with it for a few days, finally deciding to just remain with Google Play books instead of Apple Books.

Seems pretty boneheaded on Apple's part.

[Junket]

Originally Posted by AlanHK

I guess this is one of those "throw your hands up" and/or "pull out your hair" things about how Apple does things.

Hah. That is a great description of how Apple likes to enforce their environment. I made more or less the same observations about font justification as you did.

Knowing that Apple sometimes enforces things like this, I just gave up trying to figure it out and stuck with Google books much like the post(er) above this one.

. /