I thought when you have consecutive characters on a line by themselves, like ***, SOL converts it to a horizontal line.
In a story I'm reading, the *** is there as the scene change.
What am I missing?
I thought when you have consecutive characters on a line by themselves, like ***, SOL converts it to a horizontal line.
In a story I'm reading, the *** is there as the scene change.
What am I missing?
It was probably bolded or italicized and vixen didn't notice and it was before the code was adjusted to compensate and remove the formatting.
What do you do if you don't want a line and just want five asterisk? I quite like having a centralised ***** as a time break.
How about this:
< p class="center">*hairspace*hairspace*hairspace*hairspace*< /p>
(HTML named entity hairsp;)
HM.
< p class="center">*hairspace*hairspace*hairspace*hairspace*< /p>
What's wrong with the hr? It works and SOL readers are used to it. I was simply wondering why the story had *** instead. Lazeez explained it.
Pixy likes the asterisks and Lazeez told him he can't have them.
So I asked Lazeez about asterisks separated by Hairspaces.
Hairspaces are so small the reader wouldn't recognize the additional space between the asterisks.
HM.
< p class="center">*hairspace*hairspace*hairspace*hairspace*< /p>
So I initially reply with:
Centred asterisks are wasteful and cannot be targeted by CSS.
And you suggest a 59 character replacement for a 4 characters tag that still can't be targeted by CSS unless we make it even more wasteful by having to add another class to it.
And you suggest we make it even more wasteful by having to add another class to it
Meanwhile, in my twisted mind, I'm picturing helmut_meukel shouting 'Hold my beer!' just before they typed their initial response to Laz's comment of it being too wasteful...
This chapter starts with eight centralised asterisks. I have no idea how the author did it.
He made the asterisks italic and centered them. Probably legacy because I think Lazeez has fixed that 'bug' so making them italic doesn't work anymore.
As a reader I prefer the plain hr instead of asterisks since they tend to change between chapters.
Maybe sometime in the future Lazeez will allow authors to set a CSS transformation for hr codes ;) At least that will ensure that every hr is consistently the same.
I'm a little amused by the 'fancy scene break' fetish some authors seem to have :) It has come up in older topics too.
So, what's wrong with the plain HR? It works as intended on SOL and for your epubs you can use CSS to change it into whatever fancy thing you want it to be, even an image if that's what you want. Using it that way will also ensure consistency throughout your whole book.
So, what's wrong with the plain HR? It works as intended on SOL and for your epubs you can use CSS to change it into whatever fancy thing you want it to be
As I said in a later post, I agree with "what's wrong with the plain HR?" for SOL stories. I was just wondering why I saw the centered *** in a story, but Lazeez explained why.
As to my ebooks, what I do works for both the novel on Bookapy and what is posted on SOL. In Word, I use a centered *** with 12pt spacing before and 9pt spacing after (which goes with the paragraphs before and after it that have spacing of 0pt before and 6pt after). Calibre handles that just fine. And when I submit it to SOL, it causes no extra work because the Wizard converts it to the HR.
In Word, I use a centered *** with 12pt spacing before and 9pt spacing after (which goes with the paragraphs before and after it that have spacing of 0pt before and 6pt after). Calibre handles that just fine. And when I submit it to SOL, it causes no extra work because the Wizard converts it to the HR.
That works but it's not exactly an efficient use of resources. To begin with: using CSS instead of the longer string reduces the file size, how much depends on how many of such breaks you have in a book. But that's not the most important advantage. With CSS you can still transform a standard HR into the asterisks the way you want them but it also ensures they are all exactly the same. And if you want to change the look you only have to change the CSS in one single place and not every single break in the book. It allows you to have the basic HR for SOL and have a different one for your epubs without having to change the text.
If you're happy with how you have it now, great, but there is a technically better way to achieve the same.
And if you want to change the look you only have to change the CSS in one single place
That's true if I code the HTML. I don't. I format in Word and let Calibre create the HTML/CSS code. Is it the most efficient? Nope. Do I care? Not really. I'm an author, not a coder. I'll leave the coding to the experts.
I hand-coded the HTML/CSS for my first novel. That was before I knew about Calibre. I'm sure it wasn't efficient code and probably had errors on certain e-readers. I remember it taking forever to convert it back to a Word docx file so that I could input it into Calibre.
What does: CSS mean?
I format in Word and let Calibre create the HTML/CSS code.
I think that: HR = Hard Return.
What does: CSS mean?
CSS is the style sheet the HTML uses (Cascading Style Sheet).
It allows the fonts, colors, layouts, etc. not to be hard coded in the HTML.
Thanks for the information.
As an example, you could define the font, size, etc. for your chapter headings and everyplace you have a chapter heading in your HTML you would have the tags for that. But if you ever want to change something in the heading, say the size, you have to find every place in the HTML where the size is defined and change it.
Or you can set up a style for chapter headings in the CSS and reference that wherever you have a heading in the HTML. If you want to change the size, you change it in the CSS. In one place.
You're basically separating the style from the content.
I think that: HR = Hard Return.
In HTML hr is Horizontal Rule, i.e. < hr >
ETA: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_hr.asp
whatever fancy thing you want it to be, even an image
Wes Boyd used an image in "Sword of the Amazon":
img src="sword2.png" alt="sword scene separator" height="28" width="150"
Wen Spencer used a fancy font for the chapter titles in "Wood Sprites". To force any eBook reader (app or device) to display the title as intended, they used images of the chapter titles instead of text with a fallback to text if the image is missing:
< p class="chapter">< img src="1.png" alt="1: WHAT'S IN YOUR EASTER BASKET?" class="name" id="calibre_toc_2"/>< /p>
46 chapters = 46 images, image sizes between 9 and 18 KB.
Add to this 'stars.png' as scene separator (6.7 KB) and 'title.png' (103 KB), an image of the title page (NOT the cover)—just title and author in this fancy font.
'stars.png' isn't something fancy, just 3 stars (as in Wingdings, character code 0xB2) and 3 or 4 spaces between the stars.
BTW, there are some eBook reader apps which ignore additional fonts used for a title or headline even if the font is installed on the system (e.g. Aquile Reader).
I can understand authors who fight these apps which substitute another font by providing an image instead of text.
HM.
BTW, there are some eBook reader apps which ignore additional fonts used for a title or headline even if the font is installed on the system (e.g. Aquile Reader).
As far as I know, there are zero eBook reader apps that do not allow the reader to change the font and text size.
there are zero eBook reader apps that do not allow the reader to change the font and text size.
You missed the point. If the user changed the settings for font and size to his preference, that's ok. But the default should be to use the settings provided by the author if the font is available on the local system or embedded in the eBook. But with some apps there is no setting for this.
The Aquile Reader uses just a serif font when the formatting specifies "Lucida Calligraphy" for a header. It allows the user to select his preferred serif font, but it's then used for headers and text. Lucida Calligraphy" and the similar "Monotype Corsiva" and "ZurichCalligraphic" are cursive fonts. Therefor it's not necessary to explicitly specify 'font-style: italic;' in the CSS class '.ct' for the chapter title. The 'font-family' setting already covers this.
But when Aquile Reader uses instead the serif text font, ignoring the 'font-family' setting, the chapter titles are not in italic.
GRRR.
Using a cursive font and setting the font-style to italic may cause other programs to try to make it more italic. I remember this from older word processors, they slanted the cursive font to make it italic like a standard font without an italic face.
HM.
they used images of the chapter titles instead of text
I think Vincent Berg (Crumbly) used to do that. He also had fancy scene breaks that I think were also images. I think he was more interested in the presentation than the story itself.
I wouldn't want a fancy scene break. Like the "said" dialogue tag that's sort of invisible, I want the reader to know there's a scene break but I don't want them enamored with the design of the break. I want them to keep reading, not be distracted by it.
In a print book, there is no scene break image. Simply a blank line.
In a print book, there is no scene break image. Simply a blank line.
Only in most of them.
S.M. Sterling's Conquistador has scene break images:
Three suns (black disks with many fine rays) separated by whitespace.
HM.
46 chapters = 46 images, image sizes between 9 and 18 KB.
Add to this 'stars.png' as scene separator (6.7 KB) and 'title.png' (103 KB), an image of the title page (NOT the cover)—just title and author in this fancy font.
'stars.png' isn't something fancy, just 3 stars (as in Wingdings, character code 0xB2) and 3 or 4 spaces between the stars.
If that's what you want as representation then so be it, even if it enlarges the file size. Do readers appreciate it? Who knows.
An epub for Six Times a Day would be 280MB+ if all images were included :)
I reread this discussion and want to add another aspect to it.
If that's what you want as representation then so be it, even if it enlarges the file size. Do readers appreciate it? Who knows.
It's probably not the author who made the decision but the publisher.
They have a printed edition with a fancy font just for the printed title page and all chapter titles. The eBook should look alike, so they embed this fancy font in the eBook and reference it in the CSS style for chapter titles.
When they test the eBook with some reader devices and reader apps they see that their fancy font setting is ignored by some, changing the look dramatically.
To force the reader apps/devices to display the eBook the same as the printed book, they create images of the texts set in this font and display the images instead of the heading's text. Now their eBook version of the book doesn't look cheap or minimalistic and the buyer gets a similar look for the same price.
HM.
(typo corrected)
To force the reader apps/devices to display the eBook the same as the printed book, they create images of the texts set in this font and display the images instead of the heading's text. Now their eBook version of the book doesn't look cheap or minimalistic and the buyer gets a similar look for the same price.
The key word should be 'choice', not 'force'. This goes for both sides of the fence. The author and publisher should have the choice to create an ebook that looks and feels exactly like they want it, with all bells and whistles they want. On the other hand the reader should have the choice to switch that all off if he prefers to read with just all basic text. Whether that choice is for easier reading or because the device is otherwise slow doesn't matter, to have the choice is what matters.
I typically use a:
Location
Time & Date
At the start of each new scene.
That may not work for everyone. This is common in many "Thriller" or "Action - Adventure" novels, so I have written my own stories this way.