About Word, letter-spacing and EPUB

[roger64]

File is opened. Macros are enabled (option). I open Developer's tab to make appear Complement and I select the macro. After that, I go to the Macro tab and launch it.

I have no other add-in.

I produce EPUB with embedded fonts. These font are Linux Libertine, LinLibertineG30 a fork of the first one, and a small-caps fonts. All these are probably missing on your computer. Could this explain the warning?

Not to be carried away, I understand that the modification of titles and notes styles I observed may probably be caused by some docm template because user styles with specific names are left untouched. Only styles with "generic" names are modified.

As I wrote already, I still have no clue why my EPUB gets a letter-spacing property encompassing all the body and why the EPUB is surrounded by empty "Policepardfaut" spans... But these things are easy to destroy.

As nobody stepped forward to make some trials, and as this question does not seem to interest many people, I propose to switch to PM for the rest of your query.

[BetterRed]

Sorry Roger, I prefer to discuss openly in the forum not via PM. The PM facility is too restrictive and others can't bring additional facts and knowledge to the table if they can't see it.

BR

[roger64]

So I think it's better to call it a day and time to thank you for your help.

Not everything has been explained.

One day I hope I shall understand why, after a short use of a macro with Word 2013, the letter-spacing property manages later to slip into the body of my EPUB and why I get later hundreds of useless "Policepardfaut" spans in the EPUB. These two defects can easily be eradicated in the EPUB.

But there have been some insights. I realized that Word 2013 uses forcibly some template to modify some generic styles (titles, notes) though he does not modify specific user styles (nor tables).

And last, It has been confirmed that due to some surprising "idiosyncrasy", Word 2013 is unable to keep track of the relative width of images in odt files.

If somebody manages to get more information about the management of odt files with Word 2013, this is the thread. My odt and EPUB3 files which evidence the above points stay available.

[BetterRed]

I suggest you uninstall MS Office, reinstall from MS media, and reactivate the license. If you've activated the license more than 2-3 times before, you may have to call MS to get a one-time reactivation key (or whatever it's called). Then apply all the MS Office updates via Windows Update (WU), you'll probably have to run WU more than once.

And then, before doing anything to Word

• Download Kovid Goyal's test DOCX ==>> demo .docx file. Open it in the just installed Word 2013, make a trivial change and save it. Push that through the tools you use to create the EPUB and post the DOCX and EPUB here.
  
• Download this small ODT from Oasis Open ==>> https://www.oasis-open.org/committee...Types-wd-1.odt. Load that into the just installed Word 2013, make a trivial change and save it as DOCX. Push that through the tools you use to create the EPUB and post the ODT, DOCX and EPUB here.

Then install your typographical correction macro, apply it to Kovid's DOCX and Oasis Open's ODT, save the resultant DOCXs, convert them to EPUB and post the ODT, DOCXs and EPUBs here.

============================

Re the 'letter-spacing'

In Word 2013 right click in a para that the gets the 'letter-spacing' property, select Font->Advanced, the following are the standard default settings that will not create 'letter-spacing' properties.



The top group of controls is what you would set if you wanted non-standard spacing - note the Set Default button at the bottom. If they are not as shown above, then make them so and click Set Default.

I'll ask again, can you translate Policepardfaut into English please, the only suggestion I get from online translators is "Police Parfait".

BR

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I suggest you uninstall MS Office, reinstall from MS media, and reactivate the license. If you've activated the license more than 2-3 times before, you may have to call MS to get a one-time reactivation key (or whatever it's called). Then apply all the MS Office updates via Windows Update (WU), you'll probably have to run WU more than once.

And then, before doing anything to Word

• Download Kovid Goyal's test DOCX ==>> demo .docx file. Open it in the just installed Word 2013, make a trivial change and save it. Push that through the tools you use to create the EPUB and post the DOCX and EPUB here.
  
• Download this small ODT from Oasis Open ==>> https://www.oasis-open.org/committee...Types-wd-1.odt. Load that into the just installed Word 2013, make a trivial change and save it as DOCX. Push that through the tools you use to create the EPUB and post the ODT, DOCX and EPUB here.

Then install your typographical correction macro, apply it to Kovid's DOCX and Oasis Open's ODT, save the resultant DOCXs, convert them to EPUB and post the ODT, DOCXs and EPUBs here.

============================

Re the 'letter-spacing'

In Word 2013 right click in a para that the gets the 'letter-spacing' property, select Font->Advanced, the following are the standard default settings that will not create 'letter-spacing' properties.

Attachment 156197

The top group of controls is what you would set if you wanted non-standard spacing - note the Set Default button at the bottom. If they are not as shown above, then make them so and click Set Default.

I'll ask again, can you translate Policepardfaut into English please, the only suggestion I get from online translators is "Police Parfait".

BR

I'm perfectly happy to take a look at this, with Word 2016. I have 2010, or 2016; I never bothered to go to 2013, for a variety of reasons.

And I too, would love to know what on earth "Policepardfaut" is supposed to mean. Apparently, I'm just not cool enough.

I'd also like to know what that "nice macro" does, for your orthographic changes. ALL of these things could play into it.

Hitch

[roger64]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'm perfectly happy to take a look at this, with Word 2016. I have 2010, or 2016; I never bothered to go to 2013, for a variety of reasons.

And I too, would love to know what on earth "Policepardfaut" is supposed to mean. Apparently, I'm just not cool enough.

I'd also like to know what that "nice macro" does, for your orthographic changes. ALL of these things could play into it.

Hitch

I'll be perfectly happy to send you my files by MP.

I do work with Word 2013 which is correctly installed.

I am not sure how to translate "Policepardfaut": it's a Word shortcut for "Police par défaut" which presumably means "Default font" as Word does not use the accented é.

The macro detects the suspicious French spellings (homophones) and flags them in red. After that, it's up to me to decide is they are wrong or not. It also checks typography.

[Notjohn]

>I am not sure how to translate "Policepardfaut": it's a Word shortcut for "Police par défaut" which presumably means "Default font" as Word does not use the accented é.

Congratulations! The only thing I could come up with was "false friend of the police."

[roger64]

Your try

[roger64]

Files have been dutifully transmitted.

I must give full credits to BetterRed for showing me the solution for the letter-spacing. In my Word font - advanced settings (see two joint screenshots), there was indeed a kerning (crénage) value (see the green rectangle).

It acted in a devious way: the appearance of the odt file was not modified. This kerning value was somewhat "buried" within the xml substrate of the odt file. It only appeared when I exported to EPUB, when the converter picked it up.

For what it's worth, I also provide the other font settings. I use a customised font named LinLibertineG30.

So, we have two items explained: letter-spacing (my mistake), image relative width (Word's weakness). Two are still in waiting mode:
1. the ubiquitous presence of the span "Policepardfaut"
2. how to force Word to apply the original odt styles for titles and notes?

[Toxaris]

Perhaps a silly question, but when you install and open Word for the first time, you can actually choose if Word uses ODT or OOXML. If the default is ODT, that might solve your issues.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by roger64

Files have been dutifully transmitted.

I must give full credits to BetterRed for showing me the solution for the letter-spacing. In my Word font - advanced settings (see two joint screenshots), there was indeed a kerning (crénage) value (see the green rectangle).

It acted in a devious way: the appearance of the odt file was not modified. This kerning value was somewhat "buried" within the xml substrate of the odt file. It only appeared when I exported to EPUB, when the converter picked it up.

For what it's worth, I also provide the other font settings. I use a customised font named LinLibertineG30.

So, we have two items explained: letter-spacing (my mistake), image relative width (Word's weakness). Two are still in waiting mode:
1. the ubiquitous presence of the span "Policepardfaut"
2. how to force Word to apply the original odt styles for titles and notes?

Stupid question, about 2:

Are you not able to map styles? I mean...presumably (I don't work in OO very often, but as I recall, it functions, more or less, like most WP) you can name styles in .odt, right? If you name a style identically, in OO, to a style in Word, will they map, or not?

I do something *somewhat* similar with INDD-->Word. (Or, for the sake of accuracy, the other way around) and then in INDD.ePUB-->CSS. Could a similar concept work here, or is that just too easy?

Hitch

[Notjohn]

In OpenOffice Writer, it's Format > Character > Spacing (and probably Expanded). "Pair kerning" is selected by default.

Kerning = adjusting (usually reducing) the space between two letters so they don't appear oddly space, as in the case of A and V.

Tracking = adjusting (usually increasing) the space between letters in a line or even a word or two, usually to get rid of wide gaps between words that can't be fixed by hyphenating.

[roger64]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Perhaps a silly question, but when you install and open Word for the first time, you can actually choose if Word uses ODT or OOXML. If the default is ODT, that might solve your issues.

I installed Office globally. Later, as I looked the options with Word 2013, I selected
Tab "Enregistrement" (Save?)
"Enregistrer les fichiers au format" Texte OpenDocument (*.odt)
Save files to format Texte OpenDocument.

[roger64]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Stupid question, about 2:

Are you not able to map styles? I mean...presumably (I don't work in OO very often, but as I recall, it functions, more or less, like most WP) you can name styles in .odt, right? If you name a style identically, in OO, to a style in Word, will they map, or not?

I do something *somewhat* similar with INDD-->Word. (Or, for the sake of accuracy, the other way around) and then in INDD.ePUB-->CSS. Could a similar concept work here, or is that just too easy?

Hitch

What happens seems to be that Word 2013 uses its own styles for titles and notes because they have the same names as my odt styles. He does not touch the other user odt styles whose names are missing in its own template.

So if I am right, if I renamed in the odt file "Titre 2" as "My_Titre_2", maybe he would leave it untouched.... But this could give problems in the EPUB, for example for TOC creation.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by roger64

What happens seems to be that Word 2013 uses its own styles for titles and notes because they have the same names as my odt styles. He does not touch the other user odt styles whose names are missing in its own template.

So if I am right, if I renamed in the odt file "Titre 2" as "My_Titre_2", maybe he would leave it untouched.... But this could give problems in the EPUB, for example for TOC creation.

But...why wouldn't you just create a template, in which you modify those styles, then? You're not stuck with them, as-is.

So, what I'm saying is, if you have a heading class, which you call Title 2 (Titre), why not just modify the Heading (or Title) 2 class, in a saved template?

Obviously, when I'm mapping styles from Word-->INDD-->ePUB, I don't sit around and hunt for Word-named styles that match what I want; I just take the usuals, primarily, and I modify them so that they do what I want.

Back to our example: so you use a heading2 class, for (say) chapter titles. In ODT, call it Heading2. In Word, it's Heading 2. So far, so good.

In ODT, you wanted it to be (say), Garamond 18pt, centered. Fine. In the new Word template, just modify the Heading 2 class to be Garamond 18pt centered. If you create a template intake file--then, you only have to do this once.

(FYI: if this were me, I would NOT be using dedicated names. I don't, usually, anyway; I'd just create new heading classes, e.g., "Chapter" "Author" and so forth, as HEADING styles, if you are concerned about being able to use h1-2-3 styles to autocreate a TOC. There's really no good reason to use reserved names that are already used by Word for specific things, like "comments.")

Something I learned a long time ago, with people is, it's daft to play to their weak hands, and then get annoyed if they don't do what you want or live up to your expectations, right? Same with software. One of the things that Word does really well is work with Styles, and it gives you damn-near total control over your (eventual) CSS. So, hell, play to Word's built-in strength--manipulating Styles.

If you set up a template file, you should, I'd think, be able to map styles as you see fit. While it's bloody tedious to do this for the first time, with a comprehensive ePUB/CSS, man....it's a gorgeous time-saver once you get it going.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Hitch