Paragraph Styles for Chapter titles not staying for epub

[pfeiferk]

Problem: Chapter titles, that are set in paragraph styles to be certainfont, size, and centered, and showing up left justified, and smaller, in the epub.

Objectives: fix this style issue in epub

While also keeping the page break before the Chapters that I want in the epub so that it doesn't flow together. (This is currently working fine in the epbub the way I have it set up) 

MyIndesign Doc has paragraph styles for Chapter titles, that are set to Keep Options- Keep Lines Together, and Start Paragraph on Next page- so that I can get a break in between paragraphs in epub. Unde rExport tagging, I have Class: Chapters, and Split Document checked. I am also using TOC style and have set  Styles as the name of my Paragraph Style (Chapters) and then created a different character style for Entry Style: Chapters TOC. And have removed forced Line Break checked. I created the different heading for Style in TOC to try to fix the TOC that was keeping the formatting of the page breaks (which I don't what in the TOC) 

I think I have tried so many different things now to fix, but not sure if one is overriding another at this point. Suggestions please! Never tried any html before for epub, and hoping to avoid if possible. 

[Willi Adelberger]

Start a new document, a setting in the html and epub export

[pfeiferk]

hi- Is it a setting in this html window- please see attached. Thanks

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This is going to take some unpacking. Export to EPUB is not a straightforward one-click operation as is, say, export to PDF.

First, are you exporting to reflowable EPUB (which is strongly recommended) or fixed-page, FXL, which is quite strongly discouraged?

If you're attempting to export/embed fonts, that's also a deprecated process for many reasons. EPUB is not PDF and is not meant to exactly replicate print pages; leaving fonts flexible for management by the reader is a much better approach.

As for basic justification, spacing, size, etc. — those things are fairly simple and should export more or less as formatted in the InDesign document, but there are some gotchas. (For one thing, spacing uses considerablyu different units in each format — EPUB spacing, all things considered, will come out at about half the distance of ID source doc spacing.)

And page breaks are a bit tricky, requiring several settings to ensure they fall where you want them, reliably, in the widest range of readers.

But besides reflowable/fixed, the single most important question here is, what EPUB reader are you using to view/proof your document? They vary a lot, and some are truly awful in their rendering. I recommend either Calibre Reader or, with some reservations, Thorium Reader. Any other is going to show different results, with"different" sometimes being "an unreadable mess."

Generally speaking, you don't have to get into the export options settings until you are trying to fine-tune the results. So for now, leave that aspect of things at defaults.

[pfeiferk]

Thanks. I'm doing reflowable. Have made many epubs but never encountered this problem - might try switching the font to see if that does anything. Have also tried applying a different style to my chapter headers and didn't resolve it. Something getting crossed in settings wish I knew what. Using the epub previewer that pops up after it is created- it's Books I think? . 

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

The viewer makes a great deal of difference. If you're not using one of the standard-based, "vanilla" readers there's no telling what you might get. If it's the Adobe viewer (ADE)... it's somewhere between abysmal and garbage. If you're being ported to the Apple reader, it's okay but has its known quirks of interpretation, and should not be used except to proof books to be submitted to iTunes etc.

There is no simple thing that would cause an export or reader to change the justification on the style.

You can try looking in the Export summary, Export Details window to ensure that InDesign thinks it's exporting to Centered. (If not, the problem is somewhere in the ID style.)

The font is not likely to make much difference in the alignment. As for size, it's something of a variable factor in exporting and you should NOT be embedding fonts.

Beyond that, it's going to take some diagnostic work to see if the file is exporting correctly at the CSS level.

[pfeiferk · Accepted solution]

did some tweaking, and finally working. Was a CSS conflicting shared title. Thanks for your suggestions