Paragraph breaks in ePub?

rocalisa · 10-29-2010, 04:48 AM

My preference where possible is to read DRM free ePub files in Stanza on an iPhone, having catalogued and converted if necessary in Calibre.

Sometimes I find that the paragraphs don't break nicely with an empty line between them. When I view the file in the Calibre viewer, the paragraph beginnings are indented making it readable.

But when the file gets to Stanza on my phone, the indents have disappeared and I have paragraphs with no indents or blank lines between, making it difficult to read.

I'm far from being any kind of expert of how all these things work (I think of myself as a fairly competent user but nothing more) so I'm not really sure where to go to work on this.

I saw the page on look and feel in the conversion screens that deals with paragraphs but the message that comes up when you hover over the words says this works with <p> and <div>. I tried converting the epub to an rtf file so I could take a look at it in Word (that's the limit of my technical "expertise") and it appears that the file uses line breaks rather than paragraph breaks to form paragraphs.

I can find and replace the line breaks with the paragraph breaks and then save the rtf and convert it back to an epub which then shows up with line spaced paragraphs; but then I lose all the bonuses of the original epub such as the table of contents, images etc which I'd really rather have, and not being able to jump around chapters with the TOC can be very frustrating.

Is there a way to get around this back at the level of the original epub? Because that would be my preference.

I hope this all makes sense (I know it is far from being a technical description I've provided) and someone can help.

itimpi · 10-29-2010, 06:28 AM

You could try loading the ePub file into Sigil (a free ePub editor) and making the required changes there instead?

kovidgoyal · 10-29-2010, 10:28 AM

In stanza make sure you haven't disabled ebook styles in the preferences.

rocalisa · 10-29-2010, 03:53 PM

Thank you very much, Kovid. That did it. I didn't even know what that option did, but yes it was turned off. I turned it on again and my paragraph indents appeared. Thanks so much. That will make reading a lot easier.

10-29-2010, 04:48 AM	#1
rocalisa Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Auckland, New Zealand Device: iPhone	Paragraph breaks in ePub? My preference where possible is to read DRM free ePub files in Stanza on an iPhone, having catalogued and converted if necessary in Calibre. Sometimes I find that the paragraphs don't break nicely with an empty line between them. When I view the file in the Calibre viewer, the paragraph beginnings are indented making it readable. But when the file gets to Stanza on my phone, the indents have disappeared and I have paragraphs with no indents or blank lines between, making it difficult to read. I'm far from being any kind of expert of how all these things work (I think of myself as a fairly competent user but nothing more) so I'm not really sure where to go to work on this. I saw the page on look and feel in the conversion screens that deals with paragraphs but the message that comes up when you hover over the words says this works with <p> and <div>. I tried converting the epub to an rtf file so I could take a look at it in Word (that's the limit of my technical "expertise") and it appears that the file uses line breaks rather than paragraph breaks to form paragraphs. I can find and replace the line breaks with the paragraph breaks and then save the rtf and convert it back to an epub which then shows up with line spaced paragraphs; but then I lose all the bonuses of the original epub such as the table of contents, images etc which I'd really rather have, and not being able to jump around chapters with the TOC can be very frustrating. Is there a way to get around this back at the level of the original epub? Because that would be my preference. I hope this all makes sense (I know it is far from being a technical description I've provided) and someone can help.

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10-29-2010, 06:28 AM	#2
itimpi Wizard Posts: 4,552 Karma: 950151 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Sony PRS-950, iphone/ipad (Marvin/iBooks/QuickReader)	You could try loading the ePub file into Sigil (a free ePub editor) and making the required changes there instead?

10-29-2010, 10:28 AM	#3
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,871 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	In stanza make sure you haven't disabled ebook styles in the preferences.

10-29-2010, 03:53 PM	#4
rocalisa Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Auckland, New Zealand Device: iPhone	Thank you very much, Kovid. That did it. I didn't even know what that option did, but yes it was turned off. I turned it on again and my paragraph indents appeared. Thanks so much. That will make reading a lot easier.

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