My first EPub book, looks weird

[Michele]

I just purchased and loaded my first Epub formatted book, Under the Dome by Stephen King. The text is not right-justified, page numbers go from 10 to 10-11 to 11 to 11-12.

What can I do to make it look better, without needing advanced knowledge and learning new conversion programs?

ETA: I'm using a Sony Reader 505

[omk3]

The current implementation of epub on the sony readers does not support full justification, though that might change in the future.

About the pages, that's just how epub works. The pages are fixed, and do not have to correspond to the screens. So sometimes you are seeing two pages at once on your screen, the end of one and the start of the next, hence the 10-11. It is actually a good thing, in my opinion, because you can always refer to a page number and be sure it's the same regardless of device or font size.

If you don't like all these you could strip the drm and convert to another format., eg lrf. The legality of this is dubious, but if it's for your own use, I can't see anyone objecting

[Michele]

Is there some way to use Adobe Digital Editions to format it?

[omk3]

There are tools to edit epubs, (not adobe digital editions), but it wouldn't change what you don't like. Full justification just won't show on the sony reader for epub files, and the pages are just as they are.

[Michele]

Thank you for your help! I'm glad to know I'm not just missing some essential knowledge.

[borax99]

I have stopped buying Sony ebooks.

[gwynevans]

It's not Sony specifically, rather the Adobe display implementation on the Sony Reader that's doing that, so every ePub book, whether from Sony or anywhere else, will have the same features.

[neilmarr]

It's something you very soon get so used to, Michele, that you'll become blind to it. Things will improve as time goes on, though. Neil

[ishel]

Over a year down the track from the last reply on this thread, and having just bought my first ereader (Sony T1) and first ePub book, and somewhat shocked to find this 'feature' of ePub, that there is no right-justification (and in fact, occasionally at the start of a chapter the lines seem to be actually centred, so not left-justified either!)

So, over a year later and with a brand new model (the PRS-T1) which I have just bought as my first ereader, and Sony has not chosen to fix this. I'm a little unimpressed.

Does this problem also exist in mobi format, as per Amazon/Kindle books? I swore I'd never buy Kindle as I don't like being tied into one merchant for anything, but if they have this issue beat...

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by ishel

So, over a year later and with a brand new model (the PRS-T1) which I have just bought as my first ereader, and Sony has not chosen to fix this. I'm a little unimpressed.

I don't believe the problem is with your PRS-T1, it is with that particular epub. The epub contains styling information in its css file. The PRS-T1 will honour whatever styling is in there. Try some other epubs.

If the offending epub does not have DRM you can fix it yourself,

• by doing a Calibre epub-to-epub conversion with the correct 'Text justification' setting on the Convert - Look&Feel page
• or, if you have the necessary html/css knowledge, manually editing the css directly.

[Edit:] re right justification. The PRS-T1 most certainly does support this. I have a test epub I created myself for the purposes of checking out epub rendering on various readers. The PRS-T1 works correctly for all justification settings: left, right, center, justify

[Analogus]

First line:
This is no error but (bad) EPUB formating by the seller of the ebook. It is, I presume, a 'first line indent'. A large indent on a small screen may look like a centered line.

Right justification:
Hm... must test it. Maybe there is indeed no right justification on newer models. On the other hand: I would not need it.
Question: what observation makes you sure that there is no right justification at all?
Ebooks very seldom have right justificated text.

Full justification:
Working on newer models like PRSx50-series.

Besides: formating of commercial ebooks is partly very bad. I do sometimes a complete reformating.

A.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by omk3

The current implementation of epub on the sony readers does not support full justification, though that might change in the future.

Full justification is very possible on Sony readers. It's not a setting on the reader itself but how the epub is formatted as others have said. But here's a screenshot of an epub with right justification on my PRS-350. I'm no fan of the T1, but I'd be really surprised if it wasn't capable of it.

Originally Posted by Analogus

[B]Besides: formating of commercial ebooks is partly very bad. I do sometimes a complete reformating. A.

That ^. I'm always surprised at how badly some books are formatted, many spelling and grammar errors. It has to be much easier now with computer editing, yet the quality of ebooks is really lacking. I always said the internet will be the death of the English language as we know it.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by ishel

Over a year down the track from the last reply on this thread, and having just bought my first ereader (Sony T1) and first ePub book, and somewhat shocked to find this 'feature' of ePub, that there is no right-justification (and in fact, occasionally at the start of a chapter the lines seem to be actually centred, so not left-justified either!)

So, over a year later and with a brand new model (the PRS-T1) which I have just bought as my first ereader, and Sony has not chosen to fix this. I'm a little unimpressed.

This is not a bug, it's a feature.

The ereader shows you the formatting that the publisher placed in the book. I like left justified books on 950 so I do a epub to epub conversion and choose left justified. You could do the same and choose full justify if you prefer.

Bottom line if you don't like the book formatting complain to the publisher.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

This is not a bug, it's a feature.

The ereader shows you the formatting that the publisher placed in the book. I like left justified books on 950 so I do a epub to epub conversion and choose left justified. You could do the same and choose full justify if you prefer.

Bottom line if you don't like the book formatting complain to the publisher.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

This is not a bug, it's a feature.

The ereader shows you the formatting that the publisher placed in the book. I like left justified books on 950 so I do a epub to epub conversion and choose left justified. You could do the same and choose full justify if you prefer.

Bottom line if you don't like the book formatting complain to the publisher.

I don't entirely agree. In the ebooks I prepare for Circaidy Gregory Press I use justified for most text, centred for the logo, left aligned for TOC, and right aligned occasionally for author names after a quoted review. And they all work perfectly well on my Sony PRS 650 - and even on my Kindle after conversion by calibre.

Cybook readers can set the text left aligned, and Kindle users can set the text left aligned rather than justified if they want. So as well as complaining to the publisher one should also, in my opinion, complain to Sony. The omission of a way for the user to set justification and font family are one of the few faults with Sony.