Add empty spaces between characters (Calibre)?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

Curiosity bump is itching.

No smallish phone available. Can you provide some sample code and a screenshot of reading screen to illustrate breakage?

Thanks.

What I've seen is that if a <pre></pre> is used to prevent wrapping and the line doesn't fit on screen, with ADE, it flows off the screen to the left and you lose some of the line.

[JSWolf]

@Psymon I had a look at your Shakespeare book and it is excellent.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

@Psymon I had a look at your Shakespeare book and it is excellent.

Oh, thanks so much! Since I re-posted it recently, with the addition of my own fonts, I've been discovering all sorts of little things that needed fixing up in the latter -- tons of kerning, and also some more ligatures I found that I could use, too -- and so I've been working on that the last couple weeks.

So if you like it now, you should like it even more once I load up yet another revision (with better fonts)! Of course, a lot of those things I've been fixing up are nearly invisible (unless one is a nitpicker about tiny details in fonts, of course -- which seems to have become an affliction I've acquired in recent years).

[GrannyGrump]

@Psymon --- A thought for you --- since you are using embedded fonts for this beautiful book, how about this:

Edit your font (as a new font with a new name, of course) with extra-wide spacing, and use that spaced font for those names. This should prevent the search breakage.

So you would have an additional font "Alde_Roman_Antiqua_WIDE".

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

Edit your font (as a new font with a new name, of course) with extra-wide spacing, and use that spaced font for those names. This should prevent the search breakage.

Oh, ha ha, now there's a thought!

I wonder, though, if people would really be using the search feature much, just to look for names? As I mentioned earlier (somewhere), those same authors' names (of any significance) are still mentioned in the table of contents and stuff, too, so people would still find those names there (and then just click on that link to read the piece by that author).

That's still a thought, though! I think I'll just stick with my kludgy way of doing it, adding in a space in-between each letter, but it's still something to think about.

[GrannyGrump]

Oh, I forgot to mention --- a possible alternative to preventing line-wrap. (<pre> is really not ideal, as JSWolf notes).

Over a year ago, there was a discussion to try to prevent emdashes at end of sentences from orphaning themselves on a separate line. RbnJrg found a solution that will also prevent single words or phrases from breaking up.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...ghlight=nowrap

See Ruben's solution, post # 17.

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

Try using the following code:

1. In your .css stylesheet:

.nowrap {
    text-indent: 0;
    display: inline-block;
}

2. In your .xhtml files

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla ac tellus nunc. Etiam <span class="nowrap">T—</span> imperdiet leo metus, et gravida lacus.  Donec metus ligula, elementum at pellentesque pellentesque, suscipit ac nunc. Etiam lobortis, massa ac aliquam auctor, augue nisl sagittis urna, at dapibus tellus erat ullamcorper ligula. Praesent orci dui, pulvinar id convallis a, faucibus non mauris. Donec tellus augue, tempus sed facilisis sed, fringilla quis leo.</p>

To test the code, add "." after the word nunc. (ie. nunc.., nunc..., etc.) You'll see that the T— always remains joined.

It works under ADE 3 and upper (I suppose also it should work under ADE 2).

Regards
Rubén

I have successfully used this css ever since for short words, but on long words or phrases, it can do bad things to justification and hyphenation.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

Over a year ago, there was a discussion to try to prevent emdashes at end of sentences from orphaning themselves on a separate line. RbnJrg found a solution that will also prevent single words or phrases from breaking up.

I just use this class...

.nowrap {
	white-space: nowrap;
}

How is the method you mentioned better? Mine seems to work just fine (in what few things I can test it on, anyway).

[GrannyGrump]

According to Doitsu's tests that he reported in that thread, on ADE v 2.4.5 the emdash would still break onto a new line. (Remember, this was looking for a way to keep emdash attached to its word at the end of a sentence.). The "inline-block" method seems to keep the emdash glued on.

I think white-space: no-wrap will force your line to bleed off the edge of the screen.
I use white-space: pre-wrap, which will preserve the spacing, but will still wrap the line to keep it from flowing off the side.

[Psymon]

Interesting, never heard of "white-space: pre-wrap" -- I'll have to look into that one!

In Doitsu's version, what's the purpose of "text-indent: 0" -- what's that trying to do (or prevent)? I know what it DOES, of course, but why is it needed in that context, in the middle of a sentence (I presume) in a paragraph or something?

[Psymon]

I did a quick google search just now on that pre-wrap thing, and ended up at the w3schools site, where they say that "white-space: pre-wrap" has the effect of "Whitespace is preserved by the browser. Text will wrap when necessary, and on line breaks."

I haven't tested this out myself yet, but from that description, it just sounds like it would have the same effect as having no "white-space" tag at all, that lines are just breaking if/when they feel like it?

[GrannyGrump]

It *preserves* white space --- such as your widely-spaced author names. So the name would still display as-- B E N . J O N S O N
but would be allowed to wrap if too wide for the screen, instead of running off the edge.

Try a test of a long sentence with your wide spacing, using both settings, and see what happens.
It is kind of a toss-up if you would prefer the words to disappear off the edge, or to wrap at some random point without a hyphen. It seems like we are always having to choose the lesser of two evils.