loss if italics and smallcaps when converting epub to mobi

[franklekens]

When I convert epubs to mobi, I notice italics are sometimes systematically lost. And also smallcaps (but I doubt mobi is capable of rendering smallcaps at all -- anyway I've never seen smallcaps on my Kindle).

In the epub file, the italics are specified like this:

<span class="wpt-cursief">Text in italics</span>

Referring, of course, to an entry in the css file
span.wpt-cursief {font-family: "schreefI";}

Is Calibre not able to convert this correctly into italics for mobi files?

[franklekens]

"Cursief", by the way, is Dutch for italics.

[wallcraft]

MOBI does not support embedded fonts, so font-family with non-generic font names gets ignored. The usual way to get italics is with font-style, e.g. something like:

span.wpt-cursief {font-family: "schreef"; font-style:italic;}

The above (note that there is no I in the family) will probably work for ePub and for MOBI via Calibre.

For small-caps in MOBI you have to instead specify a standard font in a smaller size, I don't know if there is an ePub idiom that Calibre will recognize as small-caps and convert for you.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

...
For small-caps in MOBI you have to instead specify a standard font in a smaller size, I don't know if there is an ePub idiom that Calibre will recognize as small-caps and convert for you.

Wrapping the small cap text in either <small></small> tags or styling a <span>, <p> or <div> with font-size: 0.75em; or font-size: small; will usually work fine in an ePub or HTML that will be converted to MOBI by calibre.

It should be noted that Kindles (software and devices) have limits to how small the text can be. If the default font size in the Kindle is set to the smallest available size listed on its menu then any attempt to create a small cap will fail, leaving the small caps the same size as standard caps. In order to proof the MOBI file properly, you should set the default font size on the Kindle to be the third from the smallest, or larger, leaving at least 2 smaller sizes available for use as the small caps.

[franklekens]

Okay, thanks for the tips, which I'm sure will be useful to anybody authoring books.

Myself, I was merely asking about preproduced epubs that I wanted to convert for reading on my Kindle. (Since this of course is the problem with the standards war: in Europe, European books are predominantly sold as epubs.) I hoped there'd be a way to make this quick and easy conversion more lossless, but from your answers I gather that it isn't.

I don't know enough about html and css to start fiddling with the epubs before I convert them, so I'll just have to make do with the loss, I guess.

Or buy an epub-compatible ereader.