Monospace font sizes

[jugaor]

Hello.
I have noticed that, in certain apps, texts in monospaced font appear smaller than the rest.

I found this:
https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css

The font-family: monospace, monospace hack fixes the inheritance and scaling of font-size for preformatted text. The duplication of monospace is intentional.

So I have tried the above, changing:

code, kbd, samp, pre, .mono, .mono p {
  font-family: monospace;
}

to:

code, kbd, samp, pre, .mono, .mono p {
  font-family: monospace, monospace;
}

So far the "unifying" effect looks good in:

Aldiko


Lithium


PocketBook (Auto/Standard engine)


Reasily


Calibre viewer (Windows)


In apps that don't seem to need them (ADE, Google PlayBooks, Koodoo, Thorium, etc.) they don't affect them either.
On the other hand, duplicating the definition of the other families (sans, serif) has no effect. They always look good (as seen in the screenshots).

Has anyone else tried this? Could it cause any problems?

Cheers!

[JSWolf]

Forget that normalize.css. It's rubbish for eBooks.

Just put in the code for monopsace and let it be. There's no way to make it work in every program that displays ePub. For example, a lot of Android programs, you'll find they don't work well.

You cannot code for every program. You code for what's correct and if the program someone is using doesn't work, it's not your fault.

[jugaor]

JSWolf, thanks for your reply.

I agree with you that huge 'reset' or 'normalize' blocks are generally unnecessary, but this little hack seems to be useful to prevent monospaced texts from looking tiny.
In any case, I only place it when code or another monospace class is actually used in the epub.

BTW, I have continued testing and with the Big Three they look like this:

Apple iBooks (v15)


Kindle (azw3 /Calibre)


Kobo (kepub /kepubify)

(as we know, Kobo doesn't yet have a monospaced font... but it does resize just like other engines. Epub —read by ADE— has no differences.)

I leave it here in case anyone else finds it useful.
Thanks for your attention!

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by jugaor

I agree with you that huge 'reset' or 'normalize' blocks are generally unnecessary, but this little hack seems to be useful to prevent monospaced texts from looking tiny.

Since this only occurs with a few renderers, and it's always because the font being chosen is the fallback monospace and not a specific monospace font, I've never had a problem, because I embed the monospace font that I want the reader to see.

https://fonts.google.com/?classification=Monospace lists 40 font families, all free to use in eBooks, even if you are selling the books.