I put all the system notifications in the System Notification style. It may not be creative, but obvious has its own virtue.
I have the normal style (really “Default Paragraph Style”) configured to indent after an end-of-line (“carriage return” sounds old fashioned, even to me).
I don’t tab, it just auto-indents the first line of every paragraph. This carried over to the Kindle just fine. For the System Notification style, I have it outdent the first line.
This is done via Paragraph Style, Indents & Spacing, Indent, First line setting. For the Default Paragraph Style style it’s set to 0.5in. For the System Notification style it’s set to -0.08in. This seems to work fine on the Kindle. (It’s 0.0 for the System Sheet style in the tables.)
There are two other Indent settings: Before text and After text. They’re 0.0 for System Sheet (no spacing in the tables, please). They’re 0.0 for Default Paragraph Style. Hmm. Before text is 0.28in for System Notification (After is 0.0).
According to the Help text, “Before” and “After” mean “Left” and “Right”. They just didn’t want to rewrite the interface for languages that read right to left (in which case they are reversed).
This is what I want. The first line outdents and the following lines indent. It really makes it stand out without needing to surround it with whitespace. I’m not sure where the numbers came from, but whatever. That’s not the line spacing issue. That’s next.
The line spacing is Paragraph Style, Indents & Spacing, Above paragraph, Below paragraph and a “do not add space between paragraphs of same style” checkbox, which I have checked. I’m willing to bet that’s the issue. That would be hard to do with CSS (one could probably <span> one’s way out of it).
In order for everything not to squish together, the space I remove from “Below paragraph”, which is 0.06in, needs to be made up by the surrounding Default Paragraph Style settings, which are 0.0in above and 0.1in below.
If I set the System to 0 and 0, a run of default, system, system, default, default would be:
Default Style with 0.1in below.
System Style with 0.0in above and 0.0in below.
System Style with 0.0in above and 0.0in below.
Default Style with 0.0in above and 0.1in below.Default Style with 0.0in above.
That’s not what I want. Splitting 0.1 on Default between above and below and setting both 0.0 for System seems logical. Let’s shall. Except the spinner delta is 0.02. It allows me to type 0.05 in.
The normal paragraphs look unchanged. There _might_ be a bit more space around the Horizontal Line (that’s where the paw print sits), but it’s hard to tell and not that important, anyway.
The System paragraphs look unchanged, which was the goal.
Oh! This is two things. In the word processor, the System styles are san-serif. In the Kindle, they’re serifed. I would be willing to bet that’s because the Amazon conversion strips out the “Liberation Sans” font and picks a default.
I probably never would have found that except for Calibre. It has a “check styles” button. When I pressed it, yesterday, I got this warning on the font-family setting:
Unexpected missing generic font family (font-family-no-missing-generic-family-keyword).
That means nothing to me, but there’s a hyperlink.
Disallow a missing generic family keyword within font families.
The generic font family can be:
- placed anywhere in the font family list
- omitted if a keyword related to property inheritance or a system font is used
This rule checks the
fontandfont-familyproperties.
Mine (generated, not mine as in “I wrote it”) look like this:
font-family: 'Liberation Sans';
The solution seems obvious, but manual. The chapter style (Heading 1) also needs this. I’ll need to remember do this after every epub export. I need a checklist. Meanwhile, chapter 1 can be regenerated, edited, and Kindled.
The tables don’t look quite right. There must be a manual step in there, still.
- table0 width: 4.1208in change to 4.0
- rowTable0 min-height: 0.1778in change to 0.
- cellTable0 width: 1.0208in change to 0.75
- cellTable2 width: 1in change to 1.25
- cellTable3 width: 1.1in change to 0.75
- cellTable4 width: 0.7701in change to 1.25
- para6 looks fine.
- span4 looks fine.
Much better. I lost the paw. I definitely need a checklist.
There is still whitespace creeping in from somewhere, but I’ll take it. I’m calling the Kindle formatting done. (checklist is in epubREADME.txt)
Until I upload the entire book again and find out that half the character sheets use table26, rowtable37, cellTable132, cellTable134, cellTable135, cellTable136, para83, and span98. That is a future-Mark problem.
Now the phone, which I am assuming is the “Mark’s 4th Android” device (4 being the highest number).
It’s not showing up. I double-checked: That is the right name. I didn’t want to do that tonight, anyway.
Rejected image: Too bulgy and you can’t tell what’s obscuring the right edge.
