Add empty spaces between characters (Calibre)?

[Just some guy]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

If you want spaces between words, not letters, add the style

white-space: pre-wrap

and just enter the spaces as normal.

Thank you very much, kovidgoyal, that's exactly what I want!

But when I said that I'm absolutely new to ebooks, I wasn't exaggerating: A month ago, I'd never seen an ebook (let alone an ebook editor), and I had never heard the word ePub.

And so I have to admit that I don't even know how to add a style. In fact, I still barely know what it is. I think I can copy, paste and modify one now, but I have no idea how to actually make one, building on your code, or exactly where to add it.

It would be great if anyone could point me in the right direction. I do try to learn this, and the spacing thing here is the last issue with my book (except that I can't add a cover without getting Validator problems for some reason).

[Just some guy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I still don't get what's wanted. Can this be properly explained? Is there letter spacing or is it word spacing where there is more than one space between words?

I try to add extra, multiple spaces between two words.

[Just some guy]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

I hate to rain on the parade, but, AFAIK, ADE/RMSDK based epub apps don't support letter-spacing in epub2 books.
ADE 4.5.x/RMSDK 12.5.x supports letter-spacing but only in epub3 books.

This is epub 3 -- I'm aware that I'm going to lose some of my formatting on various platforms.

[Notjohn]

To see what someone actually typed hit the quote button

Great! I can now take the rest of the day off, having learned the Something New that I require from my days.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by Just some guy

It would be great if anyone could point me in the right direction. I do try to learn this, and the spacing thing here is the last issue with my book (except that I can't add a cover without getting Validator problems for some reason).

Check this out for the basics. It is a very good tutorial that covers the basis very well.
It is on the MobileRead Wiki: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EPub_Tutorial

[Phssthpok]

Another approach: <span style="width:5em"/> or similar.

[Just some guy]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

If you want spaces between words, not letters, add the style

white-space: pre-wrap

and just enter the spaces as normal.

Thank you again, kovidgoyal -- I figured out how to use your code and it's perfect!

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

I hate to rain on the parade, but, AFAIK, ADE/RMSDK based epub apps don't support letter-spacing in epub2 books.
ADE 4.5.x/RMSDK 12.5.x supports letter-spacing but only in epub3 books.

Well, crap, I just discovered this myself with an ebook I'm working on, had a whole pile of instances where I had words that needed to be spread out with more letter spacing, where I'd previously kludged it by inserting extra spaces in-between each character instead.

Then today, among other little improvements, I went through my entire book and changed those numerous instances by getting rid of all those extra spaces (and making those words now searchable in the process!) and giving them all extra letter spacing.

Worked find in Sigil, previewed perfectly... but when I opened my book in ADE (desktop PC) the letter spacing was all gone.

What the heck? That totally sucks -- I just went through this whole thread from years ago, but didn't really find any reasonable solution...

...other than to go back and change everything back to putting extra spaces in-between characters (and losing the searchability of those words).

Is there really no solution to this for epub2? I can't see myself converting my book to epub3 just to have letter spacing. How very strange that the CSS for letter spacing doesn't work.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Well, crap, I just discovered this myself with an ebook I'm working on, had a whole pile of instances where I had words that needed to be spread out with more letter spacing, where I'd previously kludged it by inserting extra spaces in-between each character instead.

Then today, among other little improvements, I went through my entire book and changed those numerous instances by getting rid of all those extra spaces (and making those words now searchable in the process!) and giving them all extra letter spacing.

Worked find in Sigil, previewed perfectly... but when I opened my book in ADE (desktop PC) the letter spacing was all gone.

What the heck? That totally sucks -- I just went through this whole thread from years ago, but didn't really find any reasonable solution...

...other than to go back and change everything back to putting extra spaces in-between characters (and losing the searchability of those words).

Is there really no solution to this for epub2? I can't see myself converting my book to epub3 just to have letter spacing. How very strange that the CSS for letter spacing doesn't work.

The problem as you see is that the CSS for letter spacing doesn't work in ADE and that means that in most cases, people reading this book won't see the letter spacing. Could you not leave the words without extra spacing and instead use something like sans-serif to differentiate those words?

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem as you see is that the CSS for letter spacing doesn't work in ADE and that means that in most cases, people reading this book won't see the letter spacing. Could you not leave the words without extra spacing and instead use something like sans-serif to differentiate those words?

Oh, it's okay, I just reverted back to how I had it before, so it all worked out okay, I suppose -- I just lost the searchability for those bits of text, basically. However, in a way it's not TOO bad, I suppose, because those instances were basically authors' names, at the end of pieces, and those authors' names were also listed in the ToC, too -- that is, not the epub ToC, but the "printed" one in my book, in the pages of my book -- and in there they were written without spaces, so if people did search those authors' names, they would find them in the ToC, where they could then click on the piece they might want to read by that author.

It's for in this epub of mine, which I posted quite a while ago...

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=279887

It's a little bit important to keep that visual aspect like that, with those names spaced out like that, if only because I was trying to make that ebook somewhat of a "facsimile" edition (in certain ways, at least -- although I did take some liberties in other ways). I've been working on some revisions to it, re the fonts used in it. So mainly it's all Shakespeare, which I'm sure is the main reason people might be interested in the book anyway, not so much for the other authors.

It's a shame it doesn't work with letter-spacing, but not "devastating" or anything (in this instance).

[JSWolf]

The thing you have to realize is that you cannot always duplicate the look of a printed book and some formatting from the printed book will just have to be done differently.

It's like the mastering of a recording for an LP and a CD have to be different.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The thing you have to realize is that you cannot always duplicate the look of a printed book and some formatting from the printed book will just have to be done differently.

Oh, of course -- this particular one was no biggie, though, a context where simply adding spaces in-between the characters wasn't an issue, really. It was only at the end of certain passages where the author's name would be typeset like this..

W i l l i a m S h a k e s p e a r e

...(but in smallcaps), just relatively short lines where I ddn't have to worry about lines (words/names) breaking funny or anything -- unless someone bumped up their font size too some crazy-big size.

Come to think of it, maybe I should add some "no word wrap" stuff around those individual spaced words/names -- wouldn't hurt, I suppose, just in case.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Oh, of course -- this particular one was no biggie, though, a context where simply adding spaces in-between the characters wasn't an issue, really. It was only at the end of certain passages where the author's name would be typeset like this..

W i l l i a m S h a k e s p e a r e

...(but in smallcaps), just relatively short lines where I ddn't have to worry about lines (words/names) breaking funny or anything -- unless someone bumped up their font size too some crazy-big size.

Come to think of it, maybe I should add some "no word wrap" stuff around those individual spaced words/names -- wouldn't hurt, I suppose, just in case.

Even if you could add code to prevent wrapping, that could still break things. Try the code on a smallish phone and a large font size and watch it break.

As for the names, I've never seen names with smallcaps also have letter spacing. IMHO, it looks odd and would be better off without the letter spacing.

[GrannyGrump]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Even if you could add code to prevent wrapping, that could still break things. Try the code on a smallish phone and a large font size and watch it break.

Curiosity bump is itching.

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

Thanks.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Even if you could add code to prevent wrapping, that could still break things. Try the code on a smallish phone and a large font size and watch it break.

Well, off the top of my head, I think "Shakespeare" is the longest name in my book (where I've used that way of typesetting things). Even with spaces in-between each character, i.e.

S h a k e s p e a r e

...are small-screen devices THAT small, and do people bump up their font size THAT big, that that would break? And if that breaks, then wouldn't those people be seeing things breaking all over the place, all the time, anyway? So is it really that big a deal that I should concern myself over this?

As for the names, I've never seen names with smallcaps also have letter spacing. IMHO, it looks odd and would be better off without the letter spacing.

Actually, I thought it looked rather nice -- in that Shakespeare book of mine, you can find it in multiple places, like on the title page, at the end of the prologue and other front matter, wherever there was a "sign-off" with a person's name at the end of any particular section (in particular in Robert Chester's "Loves Martyr" book, which is included in my Shakespeare anthology).

Perhaps it's context, too, though, with my having tried to emulate Renaissance typography/layout in my book -- might not work in other contexts, but I did feel it looked nice in there (as it does in the original 16th century documents, too).

EDIT: Here's the link again to my Shakespeare book...

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=279887

You don't have to actually download the book to see how that letter spacing in names looks, you can see a couple examples of it in the screenshots there. See in particular the second pic (after my book cover) of my main title page with my own name (Ron Koster) given extra spacing, and again in the 6th pic, with the title page for "Loves Martyr," with Robert Chester's name at the bottom with extra spacing.