Verse breaks for poetry .pdf

[Gramlin]

I read poetry journals. Line-spacing and verse-spacing matter.

Is there a way to ask Calibre to convert .pdf --> .mobi so that:

1) If paragraphs has NO space after it, remove space after paragraph
2) If paragraph has space after it, insert blank line 1em

In other words, preserve the line and verse structure, as might be seen in, for example:

"Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.

God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch..."
--(from Ariel, Sylvia Plath)

[BetterRed]

@Gramlin - you should read this sticky at the top of this sub-forum - Read this before Posting PDF Questions

PDF is the most problematic starting format

BR

[Gramlin]

I have read it, and I understand how inadequate the .pdf conversion process is on most occasions.

I just wonder if there is a way to set the 'remove space after paragraph' and 'insert blank line' options to remove blank the html default blank space but preserve an actual empty line.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Gramlin

I just wonder if there is a way to set the 'remove space after paragraph' and 'insert blank line' options to remove blank the html default blank space but preserve an actual empty line.

From the FAQ: "There is no concept of a 'paragraph' in pdf - every line is basically it's own paragraph."

[Gramlin]

Understood. I would still like to be able to treat an empty line as its own paragraph. As an object in itself.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Gramlin

Understood. I would still like to be able to treat an empty line as its own paragraph. As an object in itself.

There may be no 'empty lines' in PDF
It is a page layout

Put this line at v,w
Put this line at x,y
Put this line at z,A

The implied increment between x and z is not the same as x and v

[BetterRed]

@Gramlin - FWIW, this is for Windows.

I convert a dozen or so PDFs daily (not poetry though), I've found the most consistent road is :-

• Convert the PDF to PRC with Mobipocket Creator,
• Convert the PRC to EPUB with calibre
• Use an EPUB Editor (calibre's or Sigil) to do corrections, primarily via saved Search 'macros'
• Convert the EPUB to Kindle formats with calibre

The 'trick' is to get the book into an 'easily' editable format like EPUB and use the editor's Saved S&R facility.

For some 'books' I convert the PRC to RTF. This enables me to use the library of Word macros and add-ins that I've accumulated over the past 20+years - I save as DOCX and convert that to EPUB and Kindle formats.

BR

[Gramlin]

Thanks everyone,

It was not until I looked at a .pdf using k2pdfopt in debug mode that I could visualise how a pdf locates the text on the page, words floating in white space.

I'm happy with any amount of mess in the contents or page numbering etc. but the line-breaks are all important. Poetry is a particular pain as there is no standard layout, each is very different and to manually edit 100 pages while constantly referring to the original would mean lots of work.

There would need to be some sort of check in the original .pdf -> .epub process that looked for blank space equal to line-height between lines of text, I think.

Does Mobipocket Creator do anything of that sort?

[BetterRed]

@Gramlin - I'm not sure about Mobipocket Creator, and blank lines - better that you try it for yourself. Different books that 'look' similar as PDF's can be quite different internally and will therefore convert differently.

Conversion of Poetry sometimes gets discussed in the Workshop forum. Suggest you do a search and perhaps make a post there.

PDF is a Problematic and some Poetry can be Pernickety

However, my memory is that Plath is simple, left aligned and fixed sized (3, 4 and 5 lines) stanzas. I guess what I'm saying is that what works for Plath may not work for poets who care as much or more about appearance as they do substance

BR

[Gramlin]

Yeah, I'm not even going to think about poetry with complex line indents or concrete shapes. Let them use bitmaps! But even in work like Plath's, whether a sentence crosses a gap or runs straight through or breaks in the middle is really crucial. We don't really see that kind of "chunking" of meaning anywhere else, except perhaps advertising and the like.

I'll have a go with any other converters I can find. Might rethink the Kindle and get a tablet though.

[HarryT]

If you do want to read poetry, I'd strongly suggest doing so on a device which permits you to read the original PDF. Conversion really is problematic, as has been said. I read such PDFs (not poetry, but other PDFs with complex formatting) on my iPad, and reserve my Kindle for reading fiction.