CSS DropCap w/o indent

[brent63]

In reading the Sigil Users Guide I found out what Dropcap is and really like it.

The problem is I'm also using using first line indent.

So even the first line of the Dropcap is indented, not a very good look. (see attachment)

How can I remove it from the the first line only.

Thanks

Brent

[BetterRed]

So don't indent when there's a dropcap. Open just about any print book, the first paragraph of a chapter won't be indented, whether dropcaps are used or not.

The indents on subsequent paragraphs are there to signify their existence. Without them the reader would have to rely on all paragraphs having short last lines to know when one paragraph ends and another one starts

BR

[theducks]

What BR said

What is hard (and usually needs hand styling), is short FP's (1 liners) where the next Paragraph also starts in the space of the Drop cap.

[brent63]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

So don't indent when there's a dropcap.

If I knew how to do that I would not have posted my question on how to do it.

Brent

[brent63]

Originally Posted by theducks

What is hard (and usually needs hand styling), is short FP's (1 liners) where the next Paragraph also starts in the space of the Drop cap.

I'm not understanding what your saying.

Brent

[slowsmile]

@brent63...To reduce the indent, just find the named style in your stylesheet for the paragraph with a dropcap and just set the text-indent property to 0.

If you want to alter the right-hand spacing of the dropcap to reduce spacing, then just go into the dropcap style or relevant inline style and reduce either the margin-right or the letter-spacing style attribute in the dropcap style.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by theducks

What BR said

What is hard (and usually needs hand styling), is short FP's (1 liners) where the next Paragraph also starts in the space of the Drop cap.

So don't use Dropcaps

This is not a Sigil question, its an EPUB issue, so you might want to move it

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by slowsmile

@brent63...To reduce the indent, just find the named style in your stylesheet for the paragraph with a dropcap and just set the text-indent property to 0.

If you want to alter the right-hand spacing of the dropcap to reduce spacing, then just go into the dropcap style or relevant inline style and reduce either the margin-right or the letter-spacing style attribute in the dropcap style.

@slowsmile - the OP posted his CSS so why don't you suggest what he should do within that context. He has the dropcap in a span

BR

[brent63]

Originally Posted by slowsmile

To reduce the indent, just find the named style in your stylesheet for the paragraph with a dropcap and just set the text-indent property to 0.

My CSS file creates an indent whenever a return is entered, so there are a lot of indents that I don't want to remove.

Below is only part of the my CSS file from my first post.

body {
display: block;
font-size: 1.05em;
margin: 5px;
text-align: justify;
}
p {
font-style: normal;
font-family: Georgia;
text-indent: 20px;
margin: 5px;
}

..........

span.dropcap {
float: left;
font-size: 4.4em;
font-weight: ;
text-indent: 0px;
line-height: .8em;
margin-right: 8.0pt;
margin-bottom: -0.1em;
}

Brent

[slowsmile]

To correct your paragraph indent problem you will have to create and add another style at the bottom of your stylesheet. The new style is shown below:

span.no-indent-style {
font-style: normal;
font-family: Georgia;
text-indent: 0;
margin: 5px;
}

After you have created this style then you must then implement it as a class in the dropcaps paragraph within the relevant html file in Sigil. Example below:

<p><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="no-indent-style">he quick brown fox jumped over the hedge...</span></p>

To correct the general spacing of text lines to the right of your dropcap you must change or reduce the margin-right value in your span.dropcap styling. See below:

span.dropcap {
float: left;
font-size: 4.4em;
font-weight: ;
text-indent: 0px;
line-height: .8em;
margin-right: 3.0pt;------> reduce this value until your are happy
margin-bottom: -0.1em;
}

[RbnJrg]

Brent63 and Slowsmile:

IMHO the best aproximation is the following:

1. In the .css stylesheet, we should write the following:

.noindent {
    text-indent: 0 !important;
}

2. And in the .xhtml files, where we have the dropcaps, we should write the following:

<p class="noindent"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he quick brown fox jumped over the hedge...</p>

Regards
Rubén

[stumped]

you should also consider your audience.

you may think dropcaps look cool- the readers of your book(s) may not

personally I detest them and they are the first things I rip out of my to-read copy of any book. - so there goes all your hard work!

i think they had their place , in the dark ages, keeping bored monks awake as they hand copied.

now they just reduce overall readability ( several empirical studies have confirmed - ask google)

and the smaller the device screen , the more annoying they become.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by stumped

personally I detest them and they are the first things I rip out of my to-read copy of any book. - so there goes all your hard work!

Well technically, their hard work is not really wasted. Empirical evidence show that very few people edit all of the ebooks in their elibrary to make them meet their own personal, and exacting, typographical philosophies (and those who DO do so tend to enjoy the tinkering anyway). So most are seeing it.

Let people learn and experiment for heaven's sake.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by stumped

...personally I detest them and they are the first things I rip out of my to-read copy of any book. - so there goes all your hard work!

Hard work? It takes less than a minute to put and take drop-caps out of .epub3/.kepub/.azw3/.kfx ebooks. And two minutes at maximun to put and take drop-caps out of epub2/ADE ebooks. It may take a couple of minutes more to resolve special cases (i.e. when the paragraph starts with quotes) but not much else. No hard work at all

[brent63]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

Brent63 and Slowsmile:

IMHO the best aproximation is the following:

1. In the .css stylesheet, we should write the following:

.noindent {
    text-indent: 0 !important;
}

2. And in the .xhtml files, where we have the dropcaps, we should write the following:

<p class="noindent"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he quick brown fox jumped over the hedge...</p>

Regards
Rubén

Thank you, that worked perfectly.

Brent