POETRY FORMATTING TESTby Corcovado Press

This is a test of formatting poetry for e-book publication. The poem below challenges the e-publication process in two ways: (1) The lines are indented by various amounts, and (2) many of the vowels carry diacritical marks. In order to see an accurate display of this document as it appeared when it was composed in MSWord, download the RTF version or the PDF version. Other versions do not display the entire document accurately.

For further discussion of these problems, see the blog www.farewellrio.wordpress.com, and in particular the following posting: http://farewellrio.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/on-formatting-poems-for-e-readers-part-i-the-nature-of-the-problem/

The aim of the test is to find out how well the Smashwords technology handles these formatting challenges. It took several trials to remove hidden formatting codes from this document (as recommended in the Smashwords Style Guide) and obtain a good result. Hidden codes were identified and removed using the Reveal Codes feature of Word Perfect. The em dash also caused problems in the RTF version because it seems to have induced a hidden font change. It had to be coded with care in Word Perfect. Then the Word Perfect document was imported into MSWord. Prior to this purification, several versions were inaccurately reproduced.

Sample (1) The MSWord source for the following version of the poem Pied Beauty treats each line as a separate paragraph, and sets the paragraph indent parameter for each line as appropriate to 0.0", 0.15", 0.3" or, in the case of the last line, 2.2".

Pied BeautyBy Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to god for dappled things CFor skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced C fold, fallow, and plough;And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spáre, strange;Whatever is fickle, frecklèd, (who knows how?)

With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:

Práise hím

Smashwords displays the indents accurately in the PDF, RTF, EPUB. LRF, HTML and JavaScript versions prepared from the Sample (1) source. In the MOBI version, the lines are indented, but not accurately -- the third line of each stanza is indented the same amount as the second line. All indents are lost in the text versions. All of these versions except the PDB version preserved the diacritical marks. The PDB version showed odd codes in place of diacritical marks. Blank lines are also inserted between each pair of lines of the poem in the LRF and PDB versions.

Sample (2) The MSWord source for this next version of the first stanza also treats each line as a separate paragraph, with all the paragraph indent parameters set to 0. The second and third lines were indented by adding leading spaces. In the MSWord source document, this version looks the same as Sample (1), but the underlying coding is different.

Glory be to God for dappled things C For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Only the PDF and RTF versions accurately display the indents. They are completely lost in the HTML, JavaScript, EPUB, PDB, LRF and TEXT versions, and in the MOBI version the third line is indented the same amount as the second. The PDB version inserted gratuitous blank lines.

Sample (3) The MSWord source for this third version of the first stanza treats each line as a separate paragraph, with all the paragraph indent parameters set to 0. The second and third lines were indented by inserting tab characters. Once again, this version looks in MSWord just like Sample (1) and Sample (2), but the underlying coding is different.

Glory be to God for dappled things CFor skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

The HTML, JavaScript, PDF and RTF, EPUB, LRF and MOBI versions accurately display the indents. The indents are completely lost in the PDB and TEXT versions. The LRF and PDB versions inserted blank lines between each pair of lines of the poem.

CONCLUSIONS:

Smashwords accurately represents diacritical marks in all versions except PDB, where they are mangled. It accurately displays indents in the PDF, HTML, RTF, EPUB, LRF and JavaScript versions, provided that the MSWord source encodes the indents by setting the paragraph indent parameter, as recommended in the Smashwords Style Guide. Even with this coding method, the MOBI version does not display the indents accurately, the TEXT version loses them altogether and the PDB version shows no indents and introduces gratuitous blank lines. The LRF version also introduces gratuitous blank lines. The MOBI version displayed indents correctly only when they were represented by tab characters.

When indents are coded using initial spaces, they are displayed accurately only in the PDF and RTF versions. When they are coded as tab characters, they are displayed accurately only in the HTML, JavaScript, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, LRF and RTF versions.

In order to display indented lines of poetry accurately in e-reader documents prepared by Smashwords, it is recommended that, in the MSWord source document, each line be represented as a separate paragraph, using the paragraph indent parameter to encode its indentation. Take great care to unnecessary hidden formatting characters. The Word Perfect Reveal Codes feature is a useful tool for this purpose. Even when this recommendation is followed, some indents are

not displayed accurately in the MOBI version, and they are lost completely in the TEXT and PDB versions.