Metadata Comments formatting

[Andrew Ashling]

The metadata comments formatting seems crippled.

The "HTML source" pane used to accept html and css code, but no longer. Everything is reduced to the most basic functions. Even if you introduce code manually, it is removed. The forced formatting results in huge, ugly gaps between paragraphs in the details view on Kobo devices.

Is there a way to restore full functionality?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Andrew Ashling

The metadata comments formatting seems crippled.

The "HTML source" pane used to accept html and css code, but no longer. Everything is reduced to the most basic functions. Even if you introduce code manually, it is removed. The forced formatting results in huge, ugly gaps between paragraphs in the details view on Kobo devices.

Is there a way to restore full functionality?

Not really, but you can do something in the Preferences -> Look & Feel -> Book Details. There's a panel there you can put your own code in. Like margin:0 in the paragraph style.

[Andrew Ashling]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Not really, but you can do something in the Preferences -> Look & Feel -> Book Details. There's a panel there you can put your own code in. Like margin:0 in the paragraph style.

Thanks for the suggestion, but changes made in the code panel don't stick. Changes/additions get removed and the panel reverts to the default.

Edit to add:

It seems the changes do take after all. It just takes a restart to show them.

Edit to add #2:

While the changes have effect on the GUI of Calibre, they have no effect on the details view on the Kobo device.

I wish they would restore the old functionality where we could simply copy/paste css code into the html source pane. That worked for both Calibre's GUI and the Kobo devices.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Andrew Ashling

I wish they would restore the old functionality where we could simply copy/paste css code into the html source pane. That worked for both Calibre's GUI and the Kobo devices.

This is not fixable. See the New in calibre 4.0 under Backwards incompatibilities:

There are a few minor backwards incompatibilities to be aware of in calibre 4, because of the replacement of Qt WebKit with Qt WebEngine.

The Book details panel now no longer uses a full browser engine for rendering. This makes it faster and less resource intensive, however it supports less HTML and CSS, which means if you used advanced styling in your comments it may not fully work. See here for the supported HTML subset.

The QT rich text widget ain't what it used to be.

On a nastier side, this has been mentioned multiple times in this forum. See the threads at How to format all books comments (book details panel)? or Problem in metadata editor or Book Detail corrupted for examples. Those 3 results came up in the same search limited to the last 3 months.

[Andrew Ashling]

Originally Posted by DNSB

This is not fixable. See the New in calibre 4.0 under Backwards incompatibilities:

There are a few minor backwards incompatibilities to be aware of in calibre 4, because of the replacement of Qt WebKit with Qt WebEngine.

The Book details panel now no longer uses a full browser engine for rendering. This makes it faster and less resource intensive, however it supports less HTML and CSS, which means if you used advanced styling in your comments it may not fully work. See here for the supported HTML subset.

The QT rich text widget ain't what it used to be.

On a nastier side, this has been mentioned multiple times in this forum. See the threads at How to format all books comments (book details panel)? or Problem in metadata editor or Book Detail corrupted for examples. Those 3 results came up in the same search limited to the last 3 months.

Sorry, I should have done my research first…

Thanks for your reply.