Sigil/Calibre keeps adding indents?

[Stefan_S]

Hello all,

So I am editing a version of the book World War Z. I bought the paperback before I got my kindle, but now since I got the kindle I wanted to put it on there as well.

In the epub version I downloaded, everything is a mess. In the book, there is one paragraph that is not indented. I assume the <p> tags add indents, so I simply remove them. This displays it properly on the "Book View" from where I made changes in the "Code View".

This is the code:

<p><br /></p>

<p style="text-align: center;"><b>LHASA, THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF TIBET</b></p><br />

<b>[The world’s most populous city is still recovering from the results of last week’s general election. The Social Democrats have smashed the Llamist Party in a landslide victory and the streets are still roaring with revelers. I meet Nury Televaldi at a crowded sidewalk café. We have to shout over the euphoric din.]</b>

<p><br /></p>

In Bold is the paragraph that I want with NO indents. However, when I add the epub to calibre, convert it to mobi, then put it on my kindle, it comes out looking like this:

........[The world’s most populous city is still recovering from the results of last week’s general election. The Social Democrats have smashed the Llamist Party in a landslide victory and the streets are still roaring with revelers. I meet Nury Televaldi at a crowded sidewalk café. We have to shout over the euphoric din.]

instead of:

[The world’s most populous city is still recovering from the results of last week’s general election. The Social Democrats have smashed the Llamist Party in a landslide victory and the streets are still roaring with revelers. I meet Nury Televaldi at a crowded sidewalk café. We have to shout over the euphoric din.]

(the ...... acts as a paragraph.. couldn't add an indent on here)

How do I fix this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Stefan_S

In the epub version I downloaded, everything is a mess. In the book, there is one paragraph that is not indented. I assume the <p> tags add indents, so I simply remove them.

That assumption is where you went wrong. You need to put them back (or replace them with divs).

The p tag is a p tag. Nothing more. It's intended to be used to indicate what should be a single paragraph. If you want it to behave a particular way--with regard to indents--you'll need to style it to do so. This can be achieved through css or inline styling.

Different renderers/converters have different defaults when no styling is specified. That's why you're seeing different results in Sigil's viewer compared to the Kindle book you make from the ePub.

[Stefan_S]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

That assumption is where you went wrong. You need to put them back (or replace them with divs).

The p tag is a p tag. Nothing more. It's intended to be used to indicate what should be a single paragraph. If you want it to behave a particular way--with regard to indents--you'll need to style it to do so. This can be achieved through css or inline styling.

Different renderers/converters have different defaults when no styling is specified. That's why you're seeing different results in Sigil's viewer compared to the Kindle book you make from the ePub.

Ah, my basic html knowledge has failed me..

So when manually using TAB to create indents in sigil in "Book View" won't actually transfer to the html code?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Stefan_S

Ah, my basic html knowledge has failed me..

So when manually using TAB to create indents in sigil in "Book View" won't actually transfer to the html code?

No, it won't. In fact ... if you're going to be doing much in the way of ebook creation/editing, you'd be wise to forget the TAB key on your keyboard even exists. Whether you're using Sigil, Word, or whatever.

If you have a stylesheet, you need to style the p element to add an indent. The "text-indent" property is what you're after. Your "basic" paragraph (the one you want indents for) would look something like:

p {
  text-indent: 1.2em;
}

in the stylesheet.

Then you'd want to create a css class for the paragraphs you DON'T want indented. Something like:

p.noindent {
  text-indent: 0;
}

Then in your html, you add that class attribute to the p tags where you don't want an indent.

<p class="noindent">Blah, blah, blah</p>

[cybmole]

i think I've seen that W W Z download. it is such a mess that you'd be much better off buying the Kindle version @ only £2.37. then hopefully you'll get working chapters, decent layout etc without devoting hours to a DIY cleanup ( unless you are in it for the learning -to-code experience)

having said that - sometime the official version of a kindle book is pretty bad also, but getting the free sample lets you see the quality before you buy, or lets you see what it should look like if you are tying to fix up the version you have.

[cybmole]

FYI_ I just loaned a library version of W W Z epub. For most of the text, each para is indented, by 1 em I'd guess, and the paragraphs are widely spaced ,like the ones in this thread in fact.

thus the layout looks more like a newspaper than a book but that is probably intentional to match the style of the story.
the 1st para after each bold sub header has no indent.
there are several other layouts in use also e.g. all bold + blockquotes...

in general, the e-book has far too much white space for my tastes but maybe the paperback is similar - I do not have that to compare to