Why android epub apps almost always disregard provided CSS

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by cybmole

I am trying this app & liking it.

But can you clarify something for me that is not clear from the user manual.

There is the idea of a theme which stores pretty much every preference except a font size. it stores your choice of font family, your margins, your line spaces etc.

But font size has it's own separate control - so is that stored on a per-book basis. i.e. if i tweak font size with gestures in one book ,then go back to some other book, does the change carry over - I think not ?

Once you change the size ... yes. I beleive it will remember that size for that book. But I don't seem to recall having to reset a font size when opening a new book. It seems to be at the size I prefer already. Perhaps that's cause my books don't really specify any base font-size. It's not something that causes me much grief, though. I'm not looking to make all ebooks a homogeneous experience--that's what Moon+ is for. If the font looks too big/small to me, a couple twitches of the finger fixes it. Not to mention that I don't really keep much more than a couple of books at a time on my device. If I'm reading one book, I'm rarely going to close that to check out another. I'm not much of a book-browser.

I was also surprised by the lack of fonts - it installs with only one font and the download fonts option delivers only a bunch of odd looking ones that I've not heard of.

I seem to have gotten around it by finding where the tablet stashes its system fonts and copying some of those into the mantano fonts folder, but I'm surprised they don't make that a little less geeky ?

Yeah, I'm not really much of a font connoisseur. I think I'm still using whatever default font Mantano came with. As for the lack of fonts it comes with, I think that's a decision to keep the file-size down. Many people like me just read without even bothering to see what fonts are available, so I'm guessing they figure that those who want choices, won't mind a one-time download--or doing a little hoop-jumping to install their own. It might be relevant to note that the ability to load your own fonts (four separate font-files per family) is relatively new to Mantano. Maybe it will become less geeky down the road. But to be honest, I don't know of all that many reading apps that make installing custom fonts even possible ... let alone simple.

Definitely a "those who want, will find a way ... and those who don't, won't know they're missing anything" sort of scenarios. *shrugs*

[cybmole]

thanks for that. I think storing font size per book is a good feature, if one book needs altering for some reason it's good to know that other books in-progress will not be affected. some books are published with body text at 0.83333em, others with 1em, I think most apps auto-compensate for that anyway, but having per-book control means no need to fret about that at initial tweaking stage.

For new books it may use the same rules as Kobo & Sony readers , if there's no already-stored per book value - then assign the last-value- used-on-this-device , which usually gives the desired answer.
moon reader seems to have lots of fonts + small file size but maybe it is just accessing what's already in the system/font folder on the tablet, which seems the more sensible approach anyway!

as for fonts: because i'm wanting to compare various reader options, I figured it would be good to have them all using the same font if possible, so that does not obscure other issues.
the original Kindles used Caecilia and that's an option in the Kindle fire app, & is an option on moon reader also, so I am using that wherever I can. ( Kobo app is the exception, I see no way to add/change the 3 it comes with. I can have caecilia on my Aura HD also.
http://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/pmn-caecilia

One more Montano quesiton if I may. it seesm to do a few seconds of processing when you tell it to import books. what is it doing - I dont' think it is making a file copy - maybe it's doing some indexing ?

I think that both Mantano & moon just make a note of the file path to where the file happens to be e.g. is some download or sideload folder, whereas the Kobo app does actually import the entire book into an SQL database 9 & then ofdfers to delete the otigin file for you ).

Like you , I only have a few books loaded at any one time but I hate clutter, so I do like to know where apps are putting stuff, and also to know whether "remove from shelf" is also a "delete this file" or not.

as each app seems to bring a few public domain books to the party, and may well to do an initial device scan & import, I can get really tired of seeing copies of White Fang or Alice in Wonderland re-appearign after I was sure that I'd zapped them all!

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by cybmole

For new books it may use the same rules as Kobo & Sony readers , if there's no already-stored per book value - then assign the last-value- used-on-this-device , which usually gives the desired answer.

That very well could be what's happening. It matches what I seem to be experiencing anyway.

One more Montano quesiton if I may. it seesm to do a few seconds of processing when you tell it to import books. what is it doing - I dont' think it is making a file copy - maybe it's doing some indexing ?

Indexing probably. I think there's a "generate cover thumbnails" option that can be disable/enabled, as well.[/QUOTE]

I think that both Mantano & moon just make a note of the file path to where the file happens to be e.g. is some download or sideload folder, whereas the Kobo app does actually import the entire book into an SQL database 9 & then ofdfers to delete the otigin file for you )..

Yep. I know with Mantano, if you long-press a title in the library and check the option to delete the book file, it deletes the file from the folder where I did the initial import from. So I'm pretty certain the file's not being duplicated anywhere.

My single Mantano import folder is set to be the same as my Calibre Companion's default folder. After I add a book to CC, I can then import to Mantano. When I delete books in Mantano (having it also delete the file), I just tell CC to scan for missing book files, which then makes it easy to delete their entries in the CC database. I mostly use CC to get the books on my device in a convenient, wireless manner. I don't really use its library fondling/book launching features (although they seem very nice -- before anyone gets mad at me ).

[cybmole]

[QUOTE=DiapDealer;2893715..
My single Mantano import folder is set to be the same as my Calibre Companion's default folder. After I add a book to CC, I can then import to Mantano. ...[/QUOTE]
exactly what I opted for!.

and I set moon reader up the same way in case I continue to dabble with that.

I just found a long - but old -thread all about moon + reader, though it degenerated into nitpicking over the best choice of background colours after a few pages. Its a shame there's no centralized discussion/ bug reporting for that app. I'd really like to see, in one place, all that's known about what CSS it implements & what it ignores

PS you are right that Mantano uses the book copy in the download folder, and does not make it's own copy, I proved it by deleting one book via CC,& then seeing Mantano complain that it was now missing.

[dgatwood]

Helpful tips:

1. ADE is very picky about CSS files. If it encounters anything it doesn't like (including some valid CSS3 @media and @page rules), it throws out the entire CSS file.

2. For a long list of known EPUB reader bugs and workarounds, see the EPUB page on the MobileRead Wiki. Several of the problems you've encountered can probably be fixed with the workarounds in that list, including (in all likelihood) the header formatting issues.

3. Test content on your computer first in Safari (or possibly Chrome). 99% of the time, an Android EPUB reader is going to be based on WebKit, so Safari is likely to be the closest match to that in terms of rendering behavior, followed by Chrome coming in a close second.

[cybmole]

I am more & more convinced that mantano pro is the way forward. My only outstanding issue is that I can't simply buy it for kindle fire - I either need to buy it from google to another device - root it , hack it, copy it...;
or buy it from amazon store to that other device ( accepting that amazon always sell the out of date version) & and then jump thru geeky hoops to get it onto kindle ( but no rooting required).
I am dithering over which of those to go for.

I am also stuck on where Mantano save the themes settings- I'd want to be able to back up those & sync between tablets & it is not obvious how to do that, there's a background colour selection option that is potentially tricky to replicate.

PS FYI I now read that the way Mantano do their themes is that they add a CSS styles file to the book, on the fly; so it may fail in some cases if book has contradictory & specific css e.g. for choice of font.