calibre new feature proposal - avoid breaking paragraph

[rjwse@aol.com]

I am using Ubuntu LibreOffice Writer as input for calibre. I have noticed that pictures do not break. If there is enough room, text appears above and below a picture on an epub page. If there is not enough room on the first page, then the picture appears at the top of the second page. I would like to have the same functionality for frames. Writer has a formatting feature which lets you checkmark for nonbreaking paragraphs. There is also orphan and widow control. These orphans, widows, and nonbreaking paragraph formatting aids only work for the printed page and are not carried over as functioning commands into calibre. I would like to see the following code added if those Writer boxed are checked:
<div class="nobreak">

</div>

.nobreak {
page-break-inside: avoid;
}

[dickloraine]

Why don't you use just a different style in libre office instead od the checkmark?

[rjwse@aol.com]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

Why don't you use just a different style in libre office instead od the checkmark?

A different style of any kind will also break. calibre will break any and every paragraph as needed, but calibre will not break any images. I would like to be able to create paragraphs which either (1) absolutely will not split or (2) avoid splitting. With the calibre editor I can add in the referenced CSS after making the epub. I would like the convenience of using the already-present LibreOffice Writer "nonbreaking paragraph" feature.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre uses odfpy to convert odt documents, which is pretty limited. I suggest you save your document as docx instead. calibre has its own docx engine which is much more powerful and laready supports this feature (and many others).

[rjwse@aol.com]

Thank you for your reply. I am intrigued with the notion that docx offers more capable features than does odt. I have tried saving my Ubuntu odt file as docx, then processing through calibre. The borders around frames vanish. I have made a search, but cannot find a list of the additional capabilities of docx over odt. Can you direct me?

Presently, the latest version of LibreOffice has a group of errors which have sprung up due to the inclusion of sidebar popups for navigator, styles, etc. For one thing, colors within frames are not presently saved, but revert to white.

[kovidgoyal]

A demo showing most of the major features of DOCX conversion is in the user manual http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/conv...word-documents

[rjwse@aol.com]

Thank you. I have been trying out all of these features in an ODT test file and have successfully converted them to EPUB via calibre. I tried Saving the ODT file as a DOCX, but many features are lost. ODT does, in fact, seem to behave properly. I am still wondering how is it that one instructs calibre to keep together a frame or paragraph so that there is not a break. Does Word have an instruction for that the Writer does not?

[kovidgoyal]

It will almost certainly be because odfpy does not support the page break instructions in ODT. And ODT conversion most definitely does not support all the features in that demo, for example, it will not support complex numbered paragraphs, embedded tables of content, converting all types of references into links, and so on.

[BetterRed]

rjwse@aol.com - have you tried the Writer2ePub Extension

I would guess it works with Libre Office. I never used it myself, it may suffer same problems as you already get.

Word does have keep together, keep with next, widow and orphan control etc, its always had them, since long before OOo even existed - Word inherited them from Xerox Star.

BR

[rjwse@aol.com]

I have been using the calibre editor to good effect to keep frames from breaking by adding a "page-break-inside: avoid" line to all CSS instructions which have a #000 border. It works very well to keep captions with images when both caption and image are in a frame. Nor is there a widow or orphans black line dangling. I always use a colored area and a 2pt black frame around image and captions. This even works with ODT files when there is an upper and lower caption. There is something I have noticed about page breaks, though. When there is not enough room at the bottom of the frame, then white space will be left at the bottom so that the next page may show the frame in its entirety. However, in many cases the frame DOES NOT begin at the top of the screen as you would expect, but rather begins down the page after some seemingly unnecessary white space at the top.