problem when exporting to epub when using text justification and glyph scaling

[andreic45609011]

Hello everyone,

First of all, I'm sorry if I sometime use the wrong wordings but I'm a developper and I'm new to inDesign.

The company where I work is using inDesign exported EPUBs (Fixed Layout) as input to create digital publications and we have a problem with the inDesign project file of a client. On a lot of pages, a few lines had a problem where the words were too close from each others and it was difficult to read.

After testing I managed to isolate the problem in a small inDesign that reproduce the bug and it comes from the functionality in text -> paragraph style -> justification -> glyph scaling.

It seems I can't give the .indd and .epub with this post so I will just give a screenshot in inDesign and one in Adobe Digital Editions :

In this example I exagerated the scaling to be sure that it's visible but the client's inDesign had a scaling of 95%-100%-105% and the problem was visible on almost all pages.

It SEEMS it's because when inDesign export in epub format the scaling is lost.

So my questions are :

1) Is it a bug that will be fixed or is this feature not planned to be exportable ?

2) Is there any way to export correctly this project ?

3) Are there other functionalities that are not handled ? I found this link https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/export-content-epub-cc.html but the justification glyph scaling is not in the list.

just in case someone else has the same problem, a far from perfect fix we found is to scale down all words in the entire publication. There is more space between words but more space is more readable than no space. to reduce all words in our publication, in the export panel, we added a css file with this content :

span[class^="CharOverride"] {

  transform: scale(0.95);

}

I can't tell it will work for your publication but it worked for our which had 900+ pages.

Andreï Cavoleau
developper at WebPublication.fr

Edit: add epub export type (fixed layout)

[BobLevine]

What font is that? Is it an OpenType font?

How does it look in iBooks?

How does it look if you use Publish Online?

[andreic45609011]

Hi BobLevine,

The font in the exemple is simply the Arial that was installed in inDesign. I had the same problem with the font of the client which was Myriad Pro as well as with Times New Roman.

I'm working on windows so I don't have iBooks. I downloaded a lot of epub viewer and the problem with spaces is present on all of them.

for Publish Online, I don't know if you have access to the url : https://indd.adobe.com/view/158287c8-5405-4063-ac1f-9176510bb431 The result is correct in Publish Online, just like in inDesign or when I export to pdf. The problem only appears in epub.

[BobLevine]

You might want to give this a read if you’re on Windows. Read the comments as well:

http://boblevine.us/the-fixed-layout-epub-missing-piece-reliable-readers-for-windows-and-android/

[andreic45609011]

Hi again,

I've asked to someone working on a Mac and he has the exact same problem on IBooks :

[BobLevine]

You experiment with some other fonts (make sure they're OpenType) but if iBooks won't display it, my guess would be that it's just not supported in HTML.

[BobLevine]

One more thing...if you back up and give us full details on what you're trying to accomplish there may be other products better suited to your project.

[FeAle-7IZsBx]

Hi,

To solve this problem I have some advices

- To solve justification problem my first adjust is word / letter spacing from Justification pannel

- Even for print projects I dont apply Glyph scaling

- Scaling is not supported for FXl ePUB

Maybe you cluld try reduce a little the font size or increase the width column

Regards