Help with unordered list bullets please

[talizorah]

Hello,
I'm currently busy with editing my ebook in Calibre in epub format. I've got my custom css attached to it.

In CSS my unordered list is set to display dashes, instead of circles. The code looks like this:

ul {
  list-style-type: none;
  text-align: justify;
}

ul li:before {
  content: '–';
  position: absolute;
  margin-left: -20px;
}

It all works well in the Editor and everything is displayed properly, but when I load my book into Calibre Library and check the preview there (shortcut V) the dashes are gone. There's absolutely nothing where they should be. The rest of the ebook formatting looks ok, except for those lists.
When I convert my book to MOBI format, the dashes turn into circles, just like the part of the css was omitted. Also wrong.

The dashes are actually very crucial to my book because in my native language you write dialogues using dashes, not quotation marks, so I'd really like them to stay where they should be, else all the dialogue parts are totally disrupted.

Any help, please?

[Sarmat89]

Why would you use list items for dialogues?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

Why would you use list items for dialogues?

I would assume to save typing the leading dash (usually an em dash)

IIRC languages that mark dialogue with a leading dash, such as Russian, only use a trailing dash if the speech is broken by a dialogue descriptor followed by more speech.

BR

[kovidgoyal]

MOBI has no support for CSS you need to convert to AZW3 instead. And using absolute positioning with pixel offsets is not really reflowable so whether it works or not in any given viewer is entirely a matter of luck.

[talizorah]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I would assume to save typing the leading dash (usually an em dash)

IIRC languages that mark dialogue with a leading dash, such as Russian, only use a trailing dash if the speech is broken by a dialogue descriptor followed by more speech.

BR

Exactly, BetterRed. Central European countries also mark dialogues with dashes. My language is among them. We use quotation marks for ...quoting only or for metaphores.

[talizorah]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

MOBI has no support for CSS you need to convert to AZW3 instead. And using absolute positioning with pixel offsets is not really reflowable so whether it works or not in any given viewer is entirely a matter of luck.

Thank you very much. I'll try my luck with AZW3 then, but as I see, I should re-make all the dialogues in a manner I wanted to avoid - typing every single dash on about 800 pages. Ah, well... At least I know what to do. Have a nice day!

Update: converting to AZW3 did the trick!

[kovidgoyal]

Assuming you are using <li> only for dialogues, it should be a simple search and replace to insert the quote mark automatically. I dont really understand how wrapping every dialogue in <li> is easier than using <p>- instead.

[talizorah]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Assuming you are using <li> only for dialogues, it should be a simple search and replace to insert the quote mark automatically. I dont really understand how wrapping every dialogue in <li> is easier than using <p>- instead.

I use <li> only for dialogues. <p> I use for anything else and they have also different formatting than <li>. For example they have indents on first line by 5% which is also standard for a paragraph in my language. They also have different margin settings. Nevertheless your advice helped and now everything looks ok. I tested it on the device and no problems whatsoever anymore.