Widows and Orphans

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by RobertJSawyer

An opinion, but hardly the only one. In books that use blank lines with no typographic ornaments to indicate scene or section changes (and that is a great number of books), leaving blank space at the bottom of the screen confusingly makes it look like the current scene has ended ... only to find that it continues on the next screen and THAT can interrupt the flow of reading/understanding.

Widow/orphan control is a typographic nicety created for printed books which typically show many more lines per page than do six-inch E Ink devices, when used with default settings.

Speaking of scene breaks that use blank space, if you use margin-top: 2em; for the blank space, it can get lost at the bottom and/or top of the screen with RMSDK (ADE). What does work is padding-top: 2em; as that allows the space to show should it be at the bottom/top of the page.

And I agree that windows and orphans can confuse things. I think Readers should have windows and orphans defaulting to 1. One thing I don't get though is why in some eBooks that windows & orphans of 2 is put in the CSS.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And I agree that windows and orphans can confuse things. I think Readers should have windows and orphans defaulting to 1. One thing I don't get though is why in some eBooks that windows & orphans of 2 is put in the CSS.

Because it's a lazy copy of what the publisher used for printed versions?

Leaving up to 10 lines of CSS in each style which simply set all border elements and padding elements to zero is another that i find annoying

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by stumped

Because it's a lazy copy of what the publisher used for printed versions?

Leaving up to 10 lines of CSS in each style which simply set all border elements and padding elements to zero is another that i find annoying

What I find annoying is hundreds of CSS classes in the CSS that have no need to be there. Also, when an eBook is created with InDesign, you get some off numbers such as text-indent; 1.01389.

[Ripplinger]

Since I patch anyway, I always enable the patch to avoid widows and orphans and find it works very well and saves me having to do any conversions or worry about the .azw3 conversions.

For me, if there's a bit more space left at the bottom of a page, I think it's the end of a chapter or other such break, so it's disrupting to me to come back later and find out there's still more. I'd rather see even 1 line on the next page than to see a blank space at the bottom. And of course since the page layout changes depending on the font size you use, I find it just better all around to do without the widows and orphans.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And I agree that windows and orphans can confuse things. I think Readers should have windows and orphans defaulting to 1. One thing I don't get though is why in some eBooks that windows & orphans of 2 is put in the CSS.

Because a lot of people want to be explicit about what is happening. Because while "2" is the stated default, not all reading systems use this, so be setting it, you get the same behaviour everywhere. Because whatever tool is being used to create the ebook writes everything into the stylesheet even if it is a default. Because some people don't agree with you.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Because a lot of people want to be explicit about what is happening. Because while "2" is the stated default, not all reading systems use this, so be setting it, you get the same behaviour everywhere. Because whatever tool is being used to create the ebook writes everything into the stylesheet even if it is a default. Because some people don't agree with you.

Not everyone has to agree. But if the eBook is using blank space for section breaks, then windows and orphans of 2 is a very bad idea.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Not everyone has to agree. But if the eBook is using blank space for section breaks, then windows and orphans of 2 is a very bad idea.

I have to ask, why? And while I am curious about your knee-jerk reaction, take some extra time and think about why you really think that.

[Simboubou]

Well, If you use blank space for section breaks, having widows and orphans at 2 will sometime create white space at the end of the page that may look like a section break while it's not actually one.

[Quoth]

I like §, ~, * * * etc and even a short HR rather than a bigger margin for a section break.
Actual graphics are in some books which seems like overkill, even on paper.

On stuff I'm proofing:
I search for [ ]$, then ^[ ] and finally ^$ using regex mode on source after first:
1) Replace all tabs with space
2) Replace all 2 spaces with one & and repeat till not found.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Simboubou

Well, If you use blank space for section breaks, having widows and orphans at 2 will sometime create white space at the end of the page that may look like a section break while it's not actually one.

Bingo!

[Waylander]

Sorry for the delay in responding. What I do when converting to epub is: enter "body {orphans: 0; widows: 0}" into the Extra CSS box; click remove "Padding"; enter "line-height" into Other CSS Properties; select Kobo Reader in Output Profile; set Bottom margin to 0; select Do not split on page breaks in EPUB output. These steps usually lead to consistent bottom margins without the moving up and down I described in my first post, apart from a few books, mainly fiction. I hope this helps clarify what I've been doing up to now.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Waylander

Sorry for the delay in responding. What I do when converting to epub is: enter "body {orphans: 0; widows: 0}" into the Extra CSS box; click remove "Padding"; enter "line-height" into Other CSS Properties; select Kobo Reader in Output Profile; set Bottom margin to 0; select Do not split on page breaks in EPUB output. These steps usually lead to consistent bottom margins without the moving up and down I described in my first post, apart from a few books, mainly fiction. I hope this helps clarify what I've been doing up to now.

Do not choose Kobo in your output profile. Choose tablet. By choosing tablet, graphics will ne be resized if they are large enough. You don't want to make hi-res graphics into low-res graphics.

Also, don't set line height to anything. With a Kindle, there already is a line height set and with Kobo, you can set your own line height.

As for windows and orphans, you want to set them to 1 in case 0 is not recognized. You never know in some firmware update that could happen. Look at what happened with Kobo and KePub. The way the page numbers were done have been changed.

[davidfor]

@Waylander: Which is roughly what everyone is saying. Except that "0" is not a valid value for the widows and orphans attributes. The minimum value is 1. It's just lucky that the RMDSK is not throwing an error when the values are zero.

[Waylander]

Tbh I was following the advice laid out here https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/20...-wasted-space/

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Do not choose Kobo in your output profile. Choose tablet. By choosing tablet, graphics will ne be resized if they are large enough. You don't want to make hi-res graphics into low-res graphics.

Also, don't set line height to anything. With a Kindle, there already is a line height set and with Kobo, you can set your own line height.

As for windows and orphans, you want to set them to 1 in case 0 is not recognized. You never know in some firmware update that could happen. Look at what happened with Kobo and KePub. The way the page numbers were done have been changed.

ne = not
All good advice. Especially to use Tablet profile. If the images are too big or too small it needs fixed in a source Wordprocessor, or sometimes CSS.