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Is there a professional solution to deal with epub reflowable problems?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
March 3, 2022
4 replies
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Hi, This is my first post on the site.

I hope you can help me with your experience.

Is there a professional solution to deal with epub reflowable problems?

Even with content that consists only of text and some simple glyphs, I find the look of the book chaotic. Even with the inclusion of images linked to the text.

Even with options (export) like:

+ (content) : based on page layout .

+ (object ) : preserve appearance from layout .

But the problem that bothers me the most now is that it does not count the spaces between the lines, and the spaces between the chapter title and the body text. Although no option is selected during exportation like :(text : remove forced line breaks ).

In the Adobe manual, they say that it can be used with Adobe Dream.

I also heard that Calibre might solve the problem, but I'm not sure it handles epub reflowable professionally?

Or maybe I need some knowledge of HTML or CSS codes.

what do you think?

Is there a professional solution, or is epub reflowable not practical?and it is better to just use an epub-fixed layout.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Willi Adelberger

Is the text in one linked thread? It should be?
Do you use multiple returns to generate space between content elements? Don't do it. Use space before and after. You should not do it neither in print projects.
Did you create the tags in the paragraph styles? You should do so in the section for HTML and EPUB export in the paragraph styles.
Do you manually overwrite text properties? No, don't do that. Work completely with paragraph, character and object styles.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

The other regulars have already answered, mostly to the (correct) effect that the only path to full control and results for EPUB is to master CSS formatting. No export tool does an adequate job by itself, and the only third alternative is to "hand build" EPUB docs using the various builders and editors.

Training courses may be adequate but (IMHO) most take kind of roundabout approaches and present some inefficient workflows.

I suggest you might find my recent book on exactly this topic useful. 🙂

—

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Correct answer

Community Expert

Is the text in one linked thread? It should be?
Do you use multiple returns to generate space between content elements? Don't do it. Use space before and after. You should not do it neither in print projects.
Did you create the tags in the paragraph styles? You should do so in the section for HTML and EPUB export in the paragraph styles.
Do you manually overwrite text properties? No, don't do that. Work completely with paragraph, character and object styles.

argan artAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you very much Willi for your quick reply!
I was doing my first experience with exporting to ePUB reflowable
So I didn't give the file full attention, didn't use paragraph styles a lot, formatted manually K, and only used Enter to leave space between lines.
I will be more methodical in dealing with coordination next time.

Thank you so much!

argan artAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you very much Willi for your quick reply!

Sorry for the many grammatical errors in the reply .

In fact, I was doing my first experience with exporting to ePUB reflowable So I didn't give the file much focus and didn't use paragraph styles, I only formatted the work manually, and I only used Enter to leave space between lines. I'll be more methodical in dealing with text formatting next time.

Thank you so much!

Community Expert

Community Expert

Creating Reflowable ePubs in not intuative, it might be worth taking a LinkedIn Learning tutorial (you can get 30-days free access)

A knowledge of HTML and CSS would be invaluable for fine-tuning.

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/indesign-cc-to-epub/welcome?resume=false

argan artAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you very much for your quick reply Derek!
I am beginning to understand the difficulty surrounding the topic of epuB reflowable. The lesson idea is good, I'll take it into account.

Community Expert

Community Expert

What do you mean it doesn't count the spaces? Are you using multiple returns?

And yes, taking on reflowable EPUB without CSS/HTML skills is a fool's errand.

argan artAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you very much, Bob!
No. I'm only working on InDesign, and I was having my first experience with exporting to ePUB reflowable. I would just leave space between the headings and the text using Enter; The result is the adhesion of the titles with the texts without applying the space that you prepared to the original work file in InDesign.
Yes, you are probably right, and I started to understand that the topic is not as simple as it seemed, maybe I started by learning about HTML and CSS codes.
Thank you so much. I wasn't expecting such quick responses. (y)

Community Expert

Community Expert

Before learning about HTML and CSS you MUST master the use of paragraph and character styles. There should be almost zero manually styled text.