EPUB-KEPUB Conversion problem

[wff]

Hi guys,
I am new here, and I hope my issue have not been already solved elsewhere (even if it would be nice concerning my problem ;-)
Well, I have a Kobo Aura H2O. I manage my Ebooks with Calibre and KTE. And I need your help with an EPub->KePub conversion. My concern is about one single book of my Calibre Library.
I converted my ePub as usual, but when I wanted to read it with Kobo, I was surprised to notice that there was "display" problems: mostly spaces missing or excessive spaces. It doesn’t prevent me to read the book, but it catches my eyes and disturb me, what is not very comfortable...
I tried some things to fix that before calling for help: convert again to Kepub, change kepub output, change font, ... I sent the original ePub to kobo, and there was no problem of display and spaces and other stuff. But I need Kepub, because I like to see the real page number even when I change font size or margins. I even tried to convert EPUB to EPUB and then KEPUB again.
So I came to the conclusion I have a problem with conversion.
Here are some files to show my issue:
- screenshots of what the book is supposed to be [epub on Marvin iOS]
- ss of what I get [kepub on Kobo]
- ss of the epub file in Calibre Ebook Edit.
- Extract of the first two chapters of the book (including copyrights).
Thanks for your help,
Florent

[retiredbiker]

It looks like Marvin is hyphenating longer words. On the Kobo you have it fully justified, but no hyphenation, so the line length is all done with word spacing. You might try converting with left justification, or in the editor, changing all the text-align: justify to text-align- left. Or try using the hyphenate-this plugin (never used that, myself).

[wff]

Thank you!
I will try that and keep you posted.

[wff]

Well, I tried all you suggested, and it didn't work. Spaces are still excessive or missing. I took a couple of SS to show you.
Thank you anyway.

[JSWolf]

@Wff What you can do is install the French and English hyphenation dictionaries from the thread here. I posted the dictionaries. Then when you convert to KePub select the option to hyphenate. This way you will get hyphenation and not so many gaps in the lines. Give this a try before switching to left justify.

[wff]

Hi JSWolf,
Thank you for your answer.
I tried what you suggested, but it didn't change anything... :-(
I also tried left justification and it didn't work...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by wff

Hi JSWolf,
Thank you for your answer.
I tried what you suggested, but it didn't change anything... :-(
I also tried left justification and it didn't work...

The next suggestion is to load the ePub in the editor and see if it;s an issue with the code and if it is, you should be able ot fix it with search/replace.

[wff]

I am not very familiar with the way the code should be.
Could you have a look and tell me if there are issues in it and, if there are, the way I could fix them?
If you want to see the code by yourself, you can have a look at the epub sample I join with my first post :-)
Thanks again!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by wff

I am not very familiar with the way the code should be.
Could you have a look and tell me if there are issues in it and, if there are, the way I could fix them?
If you want to see the code by yourself, you can have a look at the epub sample I join with my first post :-)
Thanks again!

So what does the CSS (Style) for those <p> (and any other tags) look like?

No style/CSS setting and you are at the mercy of the VIEWERS defaults

[wff]

Hello theducks,
Thanks for answering.
I am sorry for the CSS sheet. Here it is.
Thanks :-)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by wff

Hello theducks,
Thanks for answering.
I am sorry for the CSS sheet. Here it is.
Thanks :-)

I had a quick look at your .css file and made a few modifications. I removed several text-align: justify, moved the widows & orphans into the body style and changed their value to 1, etc.

Hopefully, removing the text-align from the paragraph styles should let you use the justify/left settings on your ereader.

Edit: Just to mention that I had downloaded your epub file from the first message but when attempting to open it, there is an error in the content.opf file.

[davidfor]

Having a look at the book and doing some experimenting, the problem seems to be largely caused by the leading spaces in the paragraphs and character such as the thins space.

As an example, with the following paragraph:

<p>
    – Ah oui, je… » Les paroles prononcées de l’autre côté de la porte
    parvenaient au visiteur mutilées, à demi étouffées. « J’ai appelé pour
    annuler. Nous avons une… un… problème… ennui… de sécurité.
</p>

There is a thin space between "«" and "J". On the device, there is a much larger space than expected between "pour" and "annuler".

When I reformatted the above to:

  <p>– Ah oui, je… » Les paroles prononcées de l’autre côté de la porte parvenaient au visiteur mutilées, à demi étouffées. « J’ai appelé pour annuler. Nous avons une… un… problème… ennui… de sécurité.</p>

That extra space didn't occur.

I know that there are issues in the kepub parser for some characters. For example, spacing is added around an emdash when it probably shouldn't be. And isn't in an epub rendered using the RMSDK. I think there are similar issues with other characters such as the thin space used used. But, I don't normally see these as they are uncommon in English text.

From what I can see, the extra long spacing is where there is a line-break and then leading spaces within the paragraphs and a thin space or endash on the previous line. This appears to be a bug in the parser. It might be language specific handling that is wrong. But, removing the line breaks and the leading spaces in the text improves the rendering a lot.

Note: When doing this, I didn't do anything to add the spans into the file. I took the supplied sample and added it directly to the device. And edited another copy to wrap the text within paragraphs. Adding the spans would make a difference to this. It might be a case were wrapping the paragraph rather than a sentence within works better. Looking at a sample from Kobo to see what they do might be a good idea.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Edit: Just to mention that I had downloaded your epub file from the first message but when attempting to open it, there is an error in the content.opf file.

I accidentally fixed that because I edited the title in the calibre editor to show whether I was looking at the unchanged version or the one where I wrapped the text.

There were also some errors elsewhere, but, they weren't in the chapters being looked at.

[wff]

Hi DNSB and davidfor,
Thank you very much for your answers!
I tried a lot of things with justify, and it doesn't seem to work.
I noticed these thin spaces before and after some signs (like ! ? ; " ) and I was wondering if it was part of the issue, but as I am not used to epub code, I was not sure.
So I will try to search and replace, so hopefully I can get rid of the thin spaces. How could I proceed to manage leading spaces in paragraphs?
I will keep you posted with my results.
Thanks again for your help.

[JSWolf]

@Wff I tried the ePub you posted with Adobe Digital Editions 2.0.1 and it works. Try loading it an an ePub to your Kobo and read it that way. It should work much better then it does as KePub. The screen grab will show you how it looks in ADE 2.0.1 for Windows, I would expect similar results on your Kobo as ePub.