When I compile as a .pdf I get justified text but when I compile for Kindle (.mobi) the text will not justify. What setting am I missing?
I guess I’m the only one who wants this feature. Thanks anyway.
I have been disappointed when I see users pose questions regarding converting to .mobi go unanswered. Scrivener advertises their software as being able for the user to “self-publish by exporting to ePub or Kindle* formats to share your work via iBooks or Amazon, or for reading on any e-reader.”
Can anyone help Kindlefreak? It is a valid question posed and should be supported by Scrivener folks. Thank you.
Are you aware that the Kindle Publishing Guidelines specifically mention text justification in Mobi files:
In the section “Text Guidelines” it says:
…so specifying global alignment is contrary to the guidelines. Having said that, if you still want to justify the text, then there is nothing stopping you from exporting to EPUB, editing the CSS:
p {
text-align:justify;
}and using Kindlegen to create your Mobi file. It’s not really that difficult; there are plenty of resources on the web to guide you. But I’d have another look at the Kindle guidelines first. They are pretty specific about why specialized formatting can create problems for readers. There are arguments in both directions; I’m sure you have good reasons. But if you haven’t looked at the guidelines, I’d do that first.
As for L&L, I really think they’re all on vacation or something. Normally they’re good about responding to people. So be patient, if you can.
There is one more thing. The new Kindle Format 8 supports a lot more CSS than before but Scrivener does not support CSS customization for ebooks, nor would I expect it to any time soon. I’ve always gotten the impression that Scrivener is not an end-to-end document preparation tool, but a manuscript preparation tool.
If you have to have low-level control, export your work as an EPUB and import it into a tool like Sigil, or even Adobe In-Design, which will give you more control. You’ll have to know more about the internals of the format, but then, that’s to be expected.
Not on vacation, just in a million places at once.
As pointed out above by magicfingers, you really shouldn’t be worrying about this too much in the first place if it is your intention to publish to Amazon for the Kindle. The Kindle (and related software) handles this, and in fact some of the Kindle models will give the reader a choice over the matter in a global fashion (as they have in control over font size).
But if you must, the trick is to open the .epub in Sigil and edit out the “p, ul { white-space: pre-wrap }” CSS line in each of the XHTML documents that make up the individual sections of the book. This formatting command is inhibiting the justification settings that are in fact already being properly inserted in the paragraph styling classes.
We’ll have this problem fixed in the next update; it has already been noted and we’ve been looking in to fixing it.
Multiple tools can be (and in most cases should be) used to prepare a work for publishing. I’m not aware of anything that does a bang-up perfect end to end job—especially if you go all the way back to the writing and research itself, which has nothing to do with the technicalities of publishing. Stuff is either highly specialised toward a specific role (and often more difficult to learn because they are designed for industry specialists), generally useful to get something most of the way there but isn’t designed for every single possible task along the ultimate route (like Scrivener and Word). That said I’ve toned down the website a bit here, as a phrase like “all the tools you need to prepare” can be misunderstood to mean, “all the tools you need to publish”. These are not the same thing.
I would also contend that being able to easily self-publish, as a broadly stated capability, does not also immediately suggest that you will have full XHTML+CSS level of geeky control over every single aspect of the final product.
If you want to tweak stuff—that’s great! A lot of e-book publishing (by the major labels anyway) these days is sloppy and poorly edited—good on you for wanting to produce the best quality book you can. So, if the stock vanilla output isn’t for you and you can’t control it, then you’re going to need to crack open the e-book with a more detailed tool. That’s going to be true no matter how many options we add to the compiler (and we will be gradually evolving this over time, so long as those things can be stipulated as being within the remit of the software’s goal of being a tool for writing).
Anyway, all of this is beside the point. The Justify thing is a bug and it has already been resolved. That’s a clear problem in the intended path and shouldn’t be conflated with overall philosophy over what the software is meant to accomplish.