[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by A Lurker

2.) Under "Look and Feel" you can check a box to remove line spacing between paragraphs. That will delete the spaces and re-insert the tabs. However...

First, everything in Look & Feel is used for giant adjustments to books that need the changes so be careful what you try to change. Calibre is not a fine tuning / editing tool for ebooks.

Second, checking the box selects everything on that line. This means not only does it remove line spacing between paragraphs it will add a indent to every paragraph depending on what you place in that section. See attached.

Originally Posted by A Lurker

3.) When Calibre re-inserts the tabs, it simply looks for any and all paragraph breaks and places a tab at those points.

It doesn't insert tabs it sets a value you specify for indent of paragraphs in the css.

Originally Posted by A Lurker

4.) That messes up the formatting significantly because not all paragraph breaks should be followed by a tab. For example, any text you want centered on the page, such as a chapter title, ends up indented to the right of center. Another example: A paragraph starting a new section does not need to be indented.

Setting a indent value does exactly this. If you don't want your paragraphs to be indented or remain unchanged fix your indent value according to the tooltip on hover.

Originally Posted by A Lurker

DESIGN FLAW: When you check the box to remove line spacing you are not preventing Calibre from automatically re-formatting your document. In the background, Calibre still converts your document to blog format, but then turns around and tries to convert into the format specified by the user.

There is no such thing as "blog format," every conversion follow certain steps as outlined in the manual.

The input format is first converted to XHTML by the appropriate Input Plugin. This HTML is then transformed. In the last step, the processed XHTML is converted to the specified output format by the appropriate Output Plugin. The results of the conversion can vary greatly, based on the input format. Some formats convert much better than others.

The blog format you refer to is XHTML and every conversion passes through this format en-route to its final format.

Originally Posted by A Lurker

In other words, checking that box simply causes Calibre to re-format your document twice -- first to its own preference, then subsequently to the user's preference.

Wrong it is not processed twice because you selected that option. As previously explained every conversion passes through the XHTML format regardless of what options you choose. Also, checking the box selects everything on that line, remove spaces between paragraphs and add a indent to every paragraph.

Originally Posted by A Lurker

Calibre's default should be to keep the formating of the existing document and not re-format unless the user specifies.

Essentially that is calibre's default. Quit asking calibre to input an indent and calibre will quit indenting the paragraphs.

Originally Posted by A Lurker

Anyone have any idea how I can work around this? Thanks.

Asked and answered, see attached.