<blockquote> and [Indent] button question

[phossler]

I was wondering why ...

If I have blockquote in my stylesheet ...

blockquote {
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: left;
font-size: 1em;
margin-left:10%;
margin-right:10%;
margin-top:0;
margin-bottom: 1em;
font-size: 1em;
font-weight: normal;
font-style: italic;
line-height:120%;
}

... Sigil doesn't 'honor' the style sheet and just apply the <blockquote> tags? Instead Sigil adds the style class and it's own settings

<blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;">
<p>ppppppppppppp</p>
</blockquote>

Paul

[DiapDealer]

I think it's highly likely that the blockquote button is mostly for those wysiwyg users who don't want to concern themselves with html or css. If you're already knee-deep in specialized css for specific xhtml elements, how handy could clicking the blockquote button really be?

I think there's a bit of a disconnect here between user-types. "Under the hood" type ePub creators are probably not going to love the code that's autogenerated by features that are mainly intended for users who don't want to see the code behind their work.

It's unlikely that Sigil will parse all CSS (inline and external) to see if there's any styling in place for the element that one of those buttons is about to create. There's '+' and '~' selectors (among other styling scenarios) involved that would make it extremely difficult to account for it all programmatically. So the button creates what it has to to allow the wysiwyg user to increase/decrease the indent without messing with code. Those who are comfortable in code view will either fix what the button creates... or not use the button.

I could be all wet, too. That's not outside the realm of possibility.

[meme]

That's pretty much it. The increase/decrease indent buttons in Book View are just simple calls to Qt's indent/outdent functions and what Qt does is up to Qt.

I'd recommend a <blockquote>\1</blockquote> clip with the Clip Bar on to make your own button. But even that won't work in Book View as it will just ignore it since you'll be trying to put a blockquote inside a paragraph tag. You'd need to use it in Code View.

As DiapDealer said, once you're familiar with Code View, that's pretty much how people edit. I usually work in Code View, but I do use Book View when I'm just changing words or maybe using some simple span clips, but not for formatting. But usually I forget and hit a few returns to create new items, too many spaces in some places, etc. and eventually end up with messed up code. So I've gotten used to the stuff that gets inserted and I do a Find & Replace to clean it up after. (And its a real pain if you set styling on a default paragraph - it seems to get copied everywhere...) And when I'm done all that I try very hard to just edit in Code View using Preview to see what it looks like, or toggling quickly to Book View to let it pretty print my code. As soon as you start editing with Book View, all bets are off as to what your code will look like though.

[phossler]

I think I understand my misundertanding

I was thinking that [H1], ...,[Indent] were Sigil buttons to quickly add the tags. It seems (if I'm understanding right) that the buttons talk to Qt and it's Qt that actually does things to the epub, based on the way Qt wants to do things to the epub

I'd actually tried the <blockquote>\1</blockquote> clip (proud of myself for that ). That does work in CV, but I was thinking the[Indent] button did the same in BV.

The good news (for me at least) is that I spend my Sigil/Calibre time converting PD books to readable (more readable) condition for the family's Kindle. So there's not much complicated formatting, images, tables, etc.

Thanks for explaining

Paul