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Readium CSS Further Details: Explaining the CSS Voodoo

[Implementers’ doc]

Some parts of Readium CSS might feel like CSS voodoo at first sight. The goal of this document is to clarify how those parts actually work.

The Internal Framework

Readium CSS ships with a minimum viable framework to typeset unstyled publications (ReadiumCSS-default.css). Layout is managed by the “base” styles, used for all publications.

This stylesheet is based on HTML Suggested Rendering. Consequently, it will work if the markup is semantic.

If you’re familiar with CSS preprocessors (LESS, SASS, Stylus, etc.), you already know how to use it. It indeed relies on variables and functions, which are available in vanilla CSS today.

What’s noteworthy is that you can customize the entire publication by setting CSS variables (a.k.a. custom properties) and either use AS-IS at runtime or compile as a static representation before runtime (PostCSS config coming soon).

The stylesheet will then use those variables defined at the :root level.

Finally, a simplified version of the font-size normalize is embedded in this stylesheet (see next section).

Variables you can set

Typefaces

--RS__compFontFamily

The typeface for headings. The value can be another variable e.g. var(-RS__humanistTf).

--RS__codeFontFamily

The typeface for code snippets. The value can be another variable e.g. var(-RS__monospaceTf).

Typography

--RS__typeScale

The scale to be used for computing all elements’ font-size. Since those font sizes are computed dynamically, you can set a smaller type scale when the user sets one of the largest font sizes.

Possible values: 1 | 1.067 | 1.125 (suggested default) | 1.2 | 1.25 | 1.333 | 1.414 | 1.5 | 1.618

The suggested default will accomodate most configurations, from small to large screens.

--RS__baseFontSize

The default font-size for body copy. It will serve as a reference for all related computations.

--RS__baseLineHeight

The default line-height for all elements.

Vertical rhythm

--RS__flowSpacing

The default vertical margins for HTML5 flow content e.g. pre, figure, blockquote, etc.

--RS__paraSpacing

The default vertical margins for paragraphs.

--RS__paraIndent

The default text-indent for paragraphs.

Hyperlinks

--RS__linkColor

The default color for hyperlinks.

--RS__visitedColor

The default color for visited hyperlinks.

Accentuation colors

--RS__primaryColor

An optional primary accentuation color you could use for headings or any other element of your choice.

--RS__secondaryColor

An optional secondary accentuation color you could use for any element of your choice.

Dynamic leading

Readium CSS automagically finds the ideal line-height of the current font and font-size in use if the author hasn’t set an explicit value.

We’re using the current algorithm in the calc() function:

(1em + (2ex - 1ch) - ((1rem - 16px) * 0.1667)) * var(--RS__lineHeightCompensation))

Therefore, the line-height is:

  1. 1em = the size of the font-size;
  2. 2ex - 1ch = 2 x-height - 1 character width (0), in order to take the typeface’s proportions into account e.g. if the font has a small x-height, leading will be more solid, and vice versa;
  3. 1rem - 16px = the current user’s font-size minus the one at 100% (base font-size);
  4. 0.1667 = a scale which has been defined from an optimal range (it is a magic number which has been retro-engineered from a set containing hundreds of samples);
  5. var(--RS__lineHeightCompensation) is a factor (integer) to compensate a less than ideal line-height, especially in non-Latin scripts, where fonts tend to be square-ish.

This isn’t a perfect solution though, and this algorithm may be revisited in the future. Indeed, caveats are:

  • leading also depends on line-length, which is not addressed in the algorithm itself, line-length must therefore be constrained by other means – we couldn’t rely on the viewport width anyway;
  • sometimes, the User Agent default font-size is not 16px (e.g. Kindle experimental browser, user setting a larger font-size, etc.);
  • 0.1667 feels like a magic number, or at least a weird number as it was retrofitted after testing hundreds of typefaces;
  • it’s clearly a natural logarithmic function i.e. it increases rapidly and then slows towards a zero rate of change, which will give mediocre results for very large font sizes (e.g. 400%);
  • it doesn’t work ideally for slab serif fonts with a large x-height, thick stroke and medium character width i.e. square-ish metrics – we don’t have any in the default font-stacks so we had to introduce a compensation factor to address this particular issue.

Conditional Selectors for user settings

User settings are appended on load and won’t have any effect until a user-setting variable is set.

In order to do that, we must use “conditional selectors.” Problem is there is no if/else statements in CSS so how do we achieve this?

:root[style*="--USER__variable"]

Attribute selectors with pseudo-regex.

As soon as you set a property and its required flag to the html (or root) element, the user setting applies.

Whenever needed, we’re leveraging explicit inheritance (inherit value) so that the :root value can be passed throughout the DOM.

We’re also relying on the :not() pseudo-class to exclude some elements. Think of it as the following command prompt: “make all elements in the DOM inherit the value, excepted this one and that one.”

Performance of those selectors should not necessarily be a major concern. Indeed, authors’ stylesheets (weight, complexity, etc.) and expensive properties will have a much larger impact on performance.

The biggest issue with this is that it requires some time to get accustomed to, as it objectively feels like some kind of CSS trick borderline to CSS voodoo. It has proved reliable during testing though, and already deals with user settings issues other Reading Systems might have had troubles addressing so far. In addition, it automagically forces the necessary recalc some user settings absolutely require.

Themes

In this design model, themes can be a simple set of user settings. They consequently can be treated as objects you can parse to add properties to the html (root) element, and stringify to save/cache if the user creates a custom theme. No extra stylesheet needed.