Strange random page formatting

[joiwind]

Hi, please don't shout if this has been asked before.

With some epubs downloaded here from MobileRead, the text is shown in one narrow column right through the book as if it was formattted for some kind of ridiculously small telephone, even the cover and table of contents are narrow. With others, the majority, all's fine.

I've tried playing with margins and so on but to no avail.

This has been going on for about a year - I can't give titles just now off the top of my head but will if needed. And I could post photos of the screen (can't do screenshots )

Any ideas ?

KOBO Glo
software version : 4.30.18838

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by joiwind

This has been going on for about a year - I can't give titles just now off the top of my head but will if needed. And I could post photos of the screen (can't do screenshots )

A sample title would do. It may be that one of our contributors has used some odd CSS settings.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

A sample title would do. It may be that one of our contributors has used some odd CSS settings.

Yeah, I mean, you definitely run into odd formatting, hither and yon, whether here on MR (which definitely has some of the best), or PG, or PG-Oz (footnotes in tables, god help us all), etc.

Sometimes it can be the result of a CSS kluge, done a long time ago and far away, and no longer needed now; sometimes it's just...haphazard.

If you'd point us toward one, we could all see if at least there was a fast way to fix it. If it's huge margins, that should be easily fixable with a few clicks, really.

Hitch

[joiwind]

OK, here are two that don't work and two that do ! (Chosen at random.)
Incidentally, the ones that don't work in my Kobo, DO work in Sumatra. I've tried running them through Calibre and re-saving them as epubs but no go.

Don't work :

• You Play the Black And The Red Comes Up by Eric Knight
• Past Masters Thirty-Five

Do work :

• Past Masters Seven
• The Jacob Street Mystery by R. Austin Freeman

Anyway thanks for taking interest.

[hobnail]

I tried the first "don't work" one and, yes, it has wonky margins on my Kobo. With Calibre's viewer it's ok. Let me open it in Sigil and see if I can spot anything...

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by joiwind

OK, here are two that don't work and two that do !

The problem is most likely caused by the page_styles.css stylesheet.

In "Past Masters Seven," it contains:

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

and in "You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up," it contains:

@page {
    margin-bottom: 5pt;
    margin-left: 72pt;
    margin-right: 72pt;
    margin-top: 5pt;
    size: 612pt 792pt
    }

The last entry, marked in red, is invalid. Try deleting everything, except for:

    margin-bottom: 5pt;
    margin-top: 5pt

[hobnail]

I'm guessing it's the page_styles.css file:

@page {
    margin-bottom: 5pt;
    margin-left: 72pt;
    margin-right: 72pt;
    margin-top: 5pt;
    size: 612pt 792pt
    }

I opened the epub in sigil and deleted those lines from that file and then it was ok.

For Past Masters Thirty Five I pulled it into calibre and then ran the Modify ePub plugin and had the box "Modify @page and body margin styles" checked and that fixed it. I'm not sure but I think this plugin also looks at your calibre conversion settings for that and if so, mine says in the Convert box under Page setup, margins are set to 0.0pt for all 4, and I've selected Default profile for input profile and Tablet for Output profile.

So using the Modify ePub plugin is probably the least work.

Could you also send a message to pulpmeister letting him know about the problem?

Edit: Hah, doitsu beat me to it.

[joiwind]

Great ! Many thanks to all !!!

I must now go through my whole collection and try to sort out the faulty ones...

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by joiwind

Great ! Many thanks to all !!!

I must now go through my whole collection and try to sort out the faulty ones...

It very likely safe to run the Modify ePub plugin on all of them.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by hobnail

It very likely safe to run the Modify ePub plugin on all of them.

Yeah, that's an idea. (n.b.: if it were me, I'd copy the entire directory and park it somewhere, just in case, prior to running that plugin.)

Hitch

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by joiwind

Don't work :

You Play the Black And The Red Comes Up by Eric Knight

Hmm, that was uploaded by prolific uploader Pulpmeiste on 2021-03-07.

I know mobileread gives very wide latitude to uploaders, but
"size: 612pt 792pt" seems so beyond the pale, maybe someone should contact him about that. (And I think even amazon wouldn't set 1 inch side margins.)

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Hmm, that was uploaded by prolific uploader Pulpmeiste on 2021-03-07.

I know mobileread gives very wide latitude to uploaders, but
"size: 612pt 792pt" seems so beyond the pale, maybe someone should contact him about that. (And I think even amazon wouldn't set 1 inch side margins.)

He's using Microsoft Word and probably doesn't realize that his settings aren't quite kosher for ereaders. And maybe he's checking the output on a Kindle, where it might work, but not checking on a Kobo.

[joiwind]

Well, in the end there were only 24 to rectify so I corrected them manually one-by-one in Sigil, didn't take long with a bit of organisation. They dated from around the beginning of 2021 to now - if I understand right someone has sent a PM to the uploader ? I don't really want to do that... Anyway thanks again for the help and comments.

[Pulpmeister]

The four examples come from me, Pulpmeister. At the end of 2019 my old PC hard drive died, could not be resuscitated, so I got a new box with Windows 10. * Still using my old MS Office though. The two examples above that do work predate the disaster.

From that date, without me changing a thing in the way I make digital books, the epubs suddenly acquired this weird insertion of margins which I never asked for.

Joiwind sent me a PM, and I looked into it; went down a few false rabbit holes before I worked out the cause. Every epub up to the "great meltdown" was fine; every one since is, er, marginalised. I blame Windows 10, along with the infuriating way it now handles quotes, and other unimprovements. Doesn't happen, by the way, with those same books on my Kindle, using AZw3.

Anyway, henceforth, Pulpmeister epubs with be edited in Calibre to delete the unwanted margins before uploading. But I really don't feel like going back through a year's uploads, editing, and then uploading all over again. I have a queue of books lined up for 2022, including Peter Cheyney (d 1951) and others, and they'll all be fine.

Seasons wishes.

Incidentally, it cost me a small fortune to have most of the data recovered from my frazzled old hard drive. Luckily my Calibre Library was fully backed up on another drive. Once your PC or whatever first has to use "startup-repair", don't hesitate: get the drive cloned instantly, because the old one is definitely dying. Cloning a drive is so much cheaper than data recovery, but couldn't be done with mine because it was too far gone.

*Edit: Old system was Windows 7.