Technical feedback re wide word gaps in Readest app (Mac, 0.12.1)

[Mike James]

As-supplied Standard Ebooks compatible epubs (maybe all but specifically Jane Eyre) display distractingly wide gaps between words when displayed with full justification in Readest app (Mac, 0.12.1). Readest's Layout > Word Spacing setting isn't able to reduce these gaps.

With Claude's help, I've found that adding the following Readest Custom > Custom Content CSS snippet overrides the in-EPUB core.css `body` selector line `text-wrap: pretty;` resulting in Readest-controllable word spacing. Massive aesthetic improvement! 

body {
text-wrap: wrap !important;
}

Claude's explanation: 

• Root cause: `text-wrap: pretty` combined with `text-align: justify` causes CSS justification to overshoot inter-word spacing (link the WebKit/Chrome dev blog posts we found, especially the Feb 2026 "Justifying text-wrap: pretty" writeup — that's the closest thing to a canonical explanation).
• Repro: any unmodified Standard Ebooks EPUB, justification + hyphenation on, wide gaps appear; confirmed unrelated to xml:lang (en-GB vs en-US made no difference).
• User-side workaround (what you just found): Custom Content CSS → `body { text-wrap: wrap !important; }` fully resolves it without touching the EPUB.
• Possible upstream asks, worth listing as options rather than a single demand: Readest could ship this override by default in its own base stylesheet (since pretty+justify is a known bad combination generally, not just for Standard Ebooks), or expose "disable text-wrap: pretty" as a discrete toggle rather than requiring hand-written CSS. Either would help less technical users hit this same wall.
  

  Worth cross-linking to Standard Ebooks too, since their `core.css` is the thing introducing the property — even if Readest patches around it, other reading apps with the same webview quirk will hit the identical bug.

Filed as Readest's GitHub issue #5582: 
Standard Ebooks compatible EPUBs: Wide word gaps

[Alex Cabal]

Our ebooks don't specify text-align: justify for the body text; that
style is applied by your ereader. Therefore this is something to report
to your ereader and not an issue in our ebooks.

On 8/8/26 7:00 PM, Mike James wrote:
> As-supplied Standard Ebooks compatible epubs (maybe all but specifically

> Jane Eyre) display *distractingly wide gaps between words* when

> displayed with full justification in Readest app (Mac, 0.12.1).
> Readest's Layout > Word Spacing setting isn't able to reduce these gaps.
>
> With Claude's help, I've found that adding the following Readest Custom

> > Custom Content CSS snippet overrides the in-EPUB *core.css* `body`

> selector line `text-wrap: pretty;` resulting in Readest-controllable

> word spacing. /Massive aesthetic improvement!/
>
> body {
> text-wrap: wrap !important;
> }
>
> *Claude's explanation*:
>
> * *Root cause*: `text-wrap: pretty` combined with `text-align:

> justify` causes CSS justification to overshoot inter-word spacing
> (link the WebKit/Chrome dev blog posts we found, especially the Feb
> 2026 "Justifying text-wrap: pretty" writeup — that's the closest
> thing to a canonical explanation).

> * *Repro*: any unmodified Standard Ebooks EPUB, justification +

> hyphenation on, wide gaps appear; confirmed unrelated to xml:lang
> (en-GB vs en-US made no difference).

> * *User-side workaround* (what you just found): Custom Content CSS →

> `body { text-wrap: wrap !important; }` fully resolves it without
> touching the EPUB.

> * *Possible upstream asks*, worth listing as options rather than a

> single demand: Readest could ship this override by default in its
> own base stylesheet (since pretty+justify is a known bad combination
> generally, not just for Standard Ebooks), or expose "disable text-
> wrap: pretty" as a discrete toggle rather than requiring hand-
> written CSS. Either would help less technical users hit this same wall.
>

> *Worth cross-linking to Standard Ebooks too*, since their `core.css`

> is the thing introducing the property — even if Readest patches
> around it, other reading apps with the same webview quirk will hit
> the identical bug.
>
> Filed as Readest's GitHub issue #5582:

> Standard Ebooks compatible EPUBs: Wide word gaps <https://github.com/
> readest/readest/issues/5582>
>
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[Mike James]

The issue is `text-wrap: pretty;` in the body selector of a Standard Epubs compatible epub's core.css (when Readest full justification turned on). Comment out this `text-wrap: pretty;` rule, or override it in Readest custom CSS, and presentation goes from excess word space gaps to ~none. 

I've reported to Readest developer and he's investigating. 

Meanwhile, I'm delighted that this simple adjustment results in the lovely reading experience Standard Ebooks aims for!

[David]

Looks like a very nifty ebook reader! (I've used Foliate—their foundation—on Linux for ages.) Since I also read on Android and (ancient) MacOS, this could be very handy. :)

(Btw, I'm not getting your rendering issue on the web version, anyway.)

David / Fife, UK

On Sunday, 9 August 2026 at 16:59:47 UTC+1 Mike wrote:

The issue is `text-wrap: pretty;` in the body selector of a Standard Epubs compatible epub's core.css (when Readest full justification turned on). Comment out this `text-wrap: pretty;` rule, or override it in Readest custom CSS, and presentation goes from excess word space gaps to ~none. 

I've reported to Readest developer and he's investigating. 

Meanwhile, I'm delighted that this simple adjustment results in the lovely reading experience Standard Ebooks aims for!

. . .

On Saturday, August 8, 2026 at 9:17:44 PM UTC-5 Alex Cabal wrote:

Our ebooks don't specify text-align: justify for the body text; that
style is applied by your ereader. Therefore this is something to report
to your ereader and not an issue in our ebooks.

On 8/8/26 7:00 PM, Mike James wrote:
> As-supplied Standard Ebooks compatible epubs (maybe all but specifically
> Jane Eyre) display *distractingly wide gaps between words* when
> displayed with full justification in Readest app (Mac, 0.12.1).
> Readest's Layout > Word Spacing setting isn't able to reduce these gaps.

> . . .

[Jon Erdman]

It's good to know that the developer of Readest is receptive to feedback. I might have to reach out. I was actually going to switch to it, but because we use tables for drama formatting, Readest chokes pretty badly on any dramas from SE - if you accidentally tap on the table it goes to a scrolling view which would be appropriate for tabular data but not really for drama. I found readest while I was proofreading June Moon, so I noticed that immediately. It also doesn't seem to honor the nifty CSS that moves personas up above the dialogue instead of to the left when using a small screen. On my Android phone, its handling of tables is merely annoying, but on my iPad it seems to be *entirely broken*. I think my problem is that I want to identify one reading app that renders *everything* correctly, both in SE books and in commercial books, and also has progress syncing across multiple devices, and also supports both Android and iOS. That specific list of criteria has left me without a perfect solution. Closest I've gotten is BookFusion, but it chokes on text-align elements that are inside another element with a text-align property (such as a left-aligned salutation within a right-aligned header) and that caused me to actually miss an alignment issue while proofreading a recent production 🤦‍♂️

[Alex Cabal]

If you want to test unusual CSS while developing a book, it's best to
simply open it in a browser. If it works in a browser (and the CSS isn't
too exotic) then you can say you did it right and that's the best you
can hope for when it comes to ereader rendering.

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