Is @page needed in an ebook?

[DyckBook]

Many of my ebooks have a page_styles.css with just the following:

@page {
  margin-bottom: 5pt;
  margin-top: 5pt;
}

A Google search reveals "The @page CSS at-rule is used to modify some CSS properties when printing a document."

So...if I want to read the book on my Kindle not print it do I even need the CSS file?

The reason I ask is that using Modify ePub I can add styles I want, BUT they are added to every CSS file. So I end up with a page_styles.css with all of the styles that I wanted added to the stylesheet.css as well. Safely deleting the page_styles.css file would solve that bloat!

The next question, of course, is, is there a plugin that would allow me to delete a specific file from a set of books?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DyckBook

Many of my ebooks have a page_styles.css with just the following:

@page {
  margin-bottom: 5pt;
  margin-top: 5pt;
}

A Google search reveals "The @page CSS at-rule is used to modify some CSS properties when printing a document."

So...if I want to read the book on my Kindle not print it do I even need the CSS file?

You actually don't need that rule. I tend to remove it from any books I find page-styles.css in, most of which are calibre conversions.

Originally Posted by DyckBook

The reason I ask is that using Modify ePub I can add styles I want, BUT they are added to every CSS file. So I end up with a page_styles.css with all of the styles that I wanted added to the stylesheet.css as well. Safely deleting the page_styles.css file would solve that bloat!

The only caution is that calibre conversions tend to put any font-face declarations for embedded fonts into page-styles.css.

Originally Posted by DyckBook

The next question, of course, is, is there a plugin that would allow me to delete a specific file from a set of books?

I'd suggest using either calibre's editor or Sigil instead of a plugin. Most of my cleanup tends towards setting the body and two paragraph directives one with and one without indentation.

[hobnail]

If the margin-bottom and margin-top are set to zero, which is what I get with the settings I'm using when calibre converts a kindle book to epub, I leave it. Non-zero and it gets deleted which, as far as I can tell is the same as setting them to zero.

[hobnail]

You can also use calibre to convert a kindle book to the same format, and with whatever conversion settings you've set up it will give you a more convenient/normalized starting point when you then edit in calibre's editor. The original kindle book is retained, but I'm guessing you will need to back it up before you do another conversion on the same book.