Shine 5: Is there a way to adjust letter spacing?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Falkor

And all of them useless on the Shine 5

Sorry, but that's not correct. Tolino has RMSDK and the CSS code I posted for a pagebreak does work.

The other thing that works in the other renderer is to split the HTML file where the page break is wanted.

[Falkor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sorry, but that's not correct. Tolino has RMSDK and the CSS code I posted for a pagebreak does work.

The other thing that works in the other renderer is to split the HTML file where the page break is wanted.

I was referring to hyphenation. But I have to admit the hyphenation options are not entirely useless. Hyphenation does work on the device, but only when soft hyphens are set in the text (I don't think I have any books with soft hyphens, though.) Apparently the Shine 5 doesn't have hyphenation dictionaries.

Many users complain about this, as Tolino is mainly distributed in Germany and German tends to use long compound words. It's important here.

When soft hyphens are set, hyphenation is activated by default. For the default renderer you can deactivate them with "hyphens", while RMSDK uses "adobe-hyphenate".

About pagebreaks: Most users will never use RMSDK. The device opens all Epubs with the default renderer unless RMSDK is activated in the developer menu or config file.
Spltting up html files for every page break sure feels like a giant step backwards.
Do webkit column breaks work for pagebreaks in the Kobo kepub renderer?

While RMSDK is really old and outdated, the overall user experience is currently much better than the default renderer's.
It opens books almost instantly, letter spacing is much better, setting the font weight works, page breaks work, embedded fonts work, the left-align/justify buttons only apply to the style set for the body tag so it doesn't mess with headings...

The default renderer on the other hand has a couple of useful modern features like support for pseudo classes and I can even make mirrored text work instead of having to rely on images. But more importantly it supports LCP DRM, which is what the public libraries here use. This is the only reason why I need the default renderer to work properly.

[Falkor]

Something that behaves oddly in RMSDK is line height. When embedded into the file, the line height is being rendered much smaller than when the same exact font file is selected as a user font.

For some fonts this can be a problem. For Charis SIL (set as a user font) I would prefer to use a smaller line height than what can be set here. Is this a known problem?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Falkor

Something that behaves oddly in RMSDK is line height. When embedded into the file, the line height is being rendered much smaller than when the same exact font file is selected as a user font.

For some fonts this can be a problem. For Charis SIL (set as a user font) I would prefer to use a smaller line height than what can be set here. Is this a known problem?

Charis SIL does have a large line height. So yes, it is a problem. However, there is a fix for the problem. You can download and try ChareInk6SP (smaller space) and ChareInk6 (normal space). Both have a smaller line height and kerning. Use the hinted versions without added weight. You can add your own weight on the Tolino.

I prefer ChareInk6SP because I rather like the smaller space.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=184056

[Falkor]

That's a good workaround. When placed in the fonts folder it's approximately the same line heigt as an embedded, unmodified Charis.

For some reason I prefer an old version of Charis –*I think its capital letters are a little smaller than in the current versions –*it sure has a slightly different vibe. I've been able to change its line spacing with FontForge.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Falkor

That's a good workaround. When placed in the fonts folder it's approximately the same line heigt as an embedded, unmodified Charis.

For some reason I prefer an old version of Charis –*I think its capital letters are a little smaller than in the current versions –*it sure has a slightly different vibe. I've been able to change its line spacing with FontForge.

You should steal the space from ChareInk6SP. I find it really helps reduce gaps and the need for hyphens.

[Falkor]

Actually I like the space as is. I don't have all that many problems with large gaps and spaces that are too small would be a bigger issue for me.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Falkor

Actually I like the space as is. I don't have all that many problems with large gaps and spaces that are too small would be a bigger issue for me.

I thought I would not like the smaller space. But I tried it and I found i liked it. Give it a try and see what you think. Even if you don;t like it for a small enough font size, it's great if you need large text. If the size is large enough, you get gaps even with hyphenation.

[iridium184]

I gave up trying to use the default Tolino reading engine (I also encountered some more bugs besides letter spacing) and installed KOReader. The current version of the Tolino Shine 5 firmware is not yet officially supported, but there's an experimental version to be found in this Github issue discussion (the update package contains a few more patches from this branch that are required for KOReader to work on the new "Kobo v5" firmware versions).

KOReader uses its own rendering engine, which works much better for me than the default renderer.