Why the font won't change in certain epubs

[somecanuck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Deleting the stylesheet is like recommending a lobotomy as a cure for a headache; you'll also be removing most of the other formatting from the file!

Edit the stylesheet (it's just a text file) and remove the specific line that's causing the problem; don't delete the whole thing.

Generally speaking, you WANT to remove the formatting anyway. The Kobo provides it's own font sizes, margins, and fonts. The semantical HTML structure provides it all it needs to display the book.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by somecanuck

Generally speaking, you WANT to remove the formatting anyway.

I'm sorry, but I must respectfully disagree.

A simple example: verse is very often formatted with different lines differently indented, like this:

line 1
    line 2
line 3
    line 4

The different indentation levels will generally be done with named styles. If you delete the stylesheet, these will be undefined, and your verse will look like this:

line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4

which is not good at all.

Honestly, you do NOT want to be deleting the stylesheet. It contains the majority of the formatting information for a book!

[ficbot]

FYI: ebooks from Harper Collins and Kensington all seem to display okay, font-wise---but without full justification. If you can handle the ragged edges and you have books from these publishers, they seem to load okay. I tested about 70 books this morning from various sources.

[JCSullivan]

Indentation in CSS means nothing. Matter of fact stylesheets ignore whitespace.
Formatting is done according to the Selectors and their properties.

EDIT
Ooops, now I see what you meant and yes you're correct HarryT

[somecanuck]

Funny enough Harry, you just gave a perfect example of why NOT to use CSS. List structures should be defined using the HTML, not merely through a margin defined in CSS. If you're familiar with HTML at all, it'd be defined like:

ol
  li /li
    ol
      li /li
      li /li
    /ol
  /li
  li /li
  li /li
/ol

Simply padding a paragraph with CSS is the wrong way to go about it.

[trishkit]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I used Calibre to convert a .mobi to .epub and Kobo couldn't/ wouldn't change the font.

I was able to right-click in Calibre and open the .epub file, perform the lobotomy and then send it back to Kobo. The entire procedure was quick and easy.

Interestingly enough, Kobo remembered my bookmark on the new file! I am not sure if I am impressed or alarmed by its omniscience.

[JSWolf]

The reason the font size cannot be changed is because it's been specified in a fixed size such as points or pixels.

If the font size is specified in em or small, large, medium, etc then the size can be changed.

[pholy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The reason the font size cannot be changed is because it's been specified in a fixed size such as points or pixels.

If the font size is specified in em or small, large, medium, etc then the size can be changed.

Well, it ought to be changeable, but I have a book with fonsize set at 1em, and I can't change the size or the font. I haven't checked for a font selector in that file, though.

Normal, large, small ought to work, but I haven't checked that....

[JCKobo]

Thanks for the help tracking this down - we've definitely found that's related to how the Adobe SDK overrides the CSS. We had to take some pretty major steps to avoid this problem on our iPad app, and it seems the same is going to be needed to make Adobe and CSS play nice.

[somecanuck]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The reason the font size cannot be changed is because it's been specified in a fixed size such as points or pixels.

If the font size is specified in em or small, large, medium, etc then the size can be changed.

Actually I thought that as well, but it's not true. Even "em" units in the CSS produced by Calibre override the font scaling.

[srid]

Originally Posted by somecanuck

Actually I thought that as well, but it's not true. Even "em" units in the CSS produced by Calibre override the font scaling.

Yup, that is true for the drmfree .mobi (kindle) file that I converted to ePub via Calibre. It has only "em" units for font specifications; yet - my Kobo won't allow me to change the text size.

JCKobo, have you folks figured out a workaround for this bug? I am impatiently trying to work around it even before the next firmware update comes.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by somecanuck

Funny enough Harry, you just gave a perfect example of why NOT to use CSS. List structures should be defined using the HTML, not merely through a margin defined in CSS.

I'm afraid we must agree to differ. A verse is not a "list structure" and defining it as a list will generally produce undesirable results, such as odd line spacings. Applying left margin indentation is the "correct" way to indent such lines, in my view, which is based on the practical experience of having created many, many hundreds of eBooks.

[NotchJ]

Hey guys, I'm tech savy but new to the whole eReader world. Got the Kobo for my daughter who loves it.

But I signed up with the local library and downloaded for her two books. One of them is PDF - yuck to navigate, and the other is epub but has this font scaling problem and the font is soo tiny we can barely read it.

So it's kind of a noob question but the whole thread here only applies to non-DRM books right? Is there anything I can do to make these books more readable on these DRM library downloads? If I open it up in a zip program I of course don't see a stylesheets.css file. Maybe my only option would be to strip the DRM with the Python script, convert via Calibre, etc?

Thanks!

[jimr]

Originally Posted by NotchJ

Hey guys, I'm tech savy but new to the whole eReader world. Got the Kobo for my daughter who loves it.

But I signed up with the local library and downloaded for her two books. One of them is PDF - yuck to navigate, and the other is epub but has this font scaling problem and the font is soo tiny we can barely read it.

So it's kind of a noob question but the whole thread here only applies to non-DRM books right? Is there anything I can do to make these books more readable on these DRM library downloads? If I open it up in a zip program I of course don't see a stylesheets.css file. Maybe my only option would be to strip the DRM with the Python script, convert via Calibre, etc?

Thanks!

Are you sure there is no .css file? I had to look around for one, but eventually found it. It doesn't always seem to be in the same folder. Once I found it, deleting it worked for all my library books.

[lchen]

I tried deleting the CSS one one of my ePubs and when I loaded it back on the Kobo the contents wouldn't display (ie. blank screens).