Okular displays ePub text in grey on white background

[chandra]

My Okular version 0.14.3/KDE platform 4.8.5 in Kubuntu 12.04 LTS shows ePub text in a faint grey on a white background.

I have tried changing obvious Okular settings but not been able to get black text on white background.

This occurs only with ePub texts; not PDF, DjVu etc.

I can post an image or any other details that could help solve this problem. Please specify what is needed.

Thanks.

[jglen490]

Have you tried any other application, such as Calibre, to open and read the epub document?

[SteveRiley]

EPUBs are ZIP files. Inside the ZIP file is a CSS stylesheet containing XML that defines how a document should be displayed. If your EPUB won't render correctly in any viewing program, you can always expand the file with something like Ark, edit the stylesheet file, then recompress the collection.

[chandra]

Have you tried any other application, such as Calibre, to open and read the epub document?

Yes, indeed. I found calibre a little too heavyweight to set up and use fbreader instead. But fbreader does not have a panel to allow both the TOC/bookmarks and the actual text to be opened and viewed together for easy navigation. Browsing or skimming is impractical without this feature which is supported excellently in okular.

I found out that the actual cause was that I had selected a dark colour scheme under

System Settings -> Application Appearance -> Colors

Once I got back to the default scheme, I was able to view black text on white background.

So, I am marking the issue solved.

[chandra]

EPUBs are ZIP files. Inside the ZIP file is a CSS stylesheet containing XML that defines how a document should be displayed. If your EPUB won't render correctly in any viewing program, you can always expand the file with something like Ark, edit the stylesheet file, then recompress the collection.

Thanks for that suggestion. I think it will be especially handy when text is rendered centred rather than left justified making it very distracting to read.

The issue I faced was traced to the colour scheme I was using, as explained in http://www.kubuntuforums.net/member.php?20035-chandra

Once the default non-dark scheme was used, it went away. I think that text colour can also be tweaked in any colour scheme. So, I might go that route with a dark scheme.