Odd formatting needs correction and TOC

[leday]

Hi...I am brand new to Sigil and have some questions. I have some epubs that had been converted from pdf documents, and after the conversion there was a hard return after every 2 or 3 lines of text (effectively splitting up whole paragraphs). How can I remove these hard returns in Sigil in bulk so that I have a complete paragraph instead of groups of 2-3 lines without having to go line by line for each and every chapter and delete each hard return manually?

Also, the TOC for these pdf files did not convert properly. I deleted these erroneous files and used the TOC editor to check the chapters I want in the TOC, but how do I get Sigil to actually build the TOC file and add it to the book so that I have a working TOC? I am a real newbie at this program so any help would be appreciated.

[Jabby]

Originally Posted by leday

Hi...I am brand new to Sigil and have some questions. I have some epubs that had been converted from pdf documents, and after the conversion there was a hard return after every 2 or 3 lines of text (effectively splitting up whole paragraphs). How can I remove these hard returns in Sigil in bulk so that I have a complete paragraph instead of groups of 2-3 lines without having to go line by line for each and every chapter and delete each hard return manually?

Also, the TOC for these pdf files did not convert properly. I deleted these erroneous files and used the TOC editor to check the chapters I want in the TOC, but how do I get Sigil to actually build the TOC file and add it to the book so that I have a working TOC? I am a real newbie at this program so any help would be appreciated.

I am a newbie at all this stuff but I might be able to get you started.

To get rid of hard breaks go to "code view" under View and use the search/replace function ( a good one). A hard break will show up as <br /> in the code view.

To create a TOC in Sigil you need to be in "Book View". Type in a TOC entry such as "Chapter 1" and highlight it. In a little box next to the blue "A" you will find a down arrow - click it and select "header 1-6. The lower the number the higher the priority and the larger the font size.

You can go to the Tool tab and click TOC editor to see what Sigil did. Moving header text around can give strange results so check the TOC editor often.

I hope I have been of some help.

Regards - John


I

[leday]

Thanks. I checked the headers and they are there as you mentioned (listed as Header-1 in the drop-down box).

However, as far as the paragraph wrapping/spacing goes, there is no <br /> in the line codes. Each line is shown as being surrounded by paragraph codes like this:

<p class="calibre1">Her husband, enclosed in his own protective bubble, had drawn his sidearm, and violence glittered in his</p>

<p class="calibre1">eyes. "And you have no right to touch another man's wife!”</p>


So far, I have been using Find/Replace to get rid of the </p> codes in Code view, and then going back to Book view to eliminate the extra white space this leaves between lines that are WITHIN a paragraph to get each paragraph to show up AS a whole paragraph. This seems to work, but it is a lengthy process. Is there a better way to do this "in bulk" instead of line by line so I get whole paragraphs and not separate "paragraphs" consisting of fragments of lines?

[Perkin]

One way I do a similar thing is with a bulk s&r (minimal match, regex and match case).
Search for

</p>(.)(.)  <p>([a-z])

the (.) get the newlines, and there's two spaces (for the indentation - you may need more if you <p>'s are inside <div>'s

Replace with

 \3

note there's a space preceding the slash

This will re-flow the lines that begin with lower case letters only.

Edit: spelling

[leday]

Forgive me for being such a newbie, but maybe I am not understanding what to do here? I opened up the Search/Replace function, and put </p>(.)(.) <p>([a-z]) into the "Find" box, and then \3 into the Replace box, but when I clicked "Replace All" I got the error "The search term was replaced 0 times". Do you know what I am doing wrong?

[Jabby]

Originally Posted by leday

Forgive me for being such a newbie, but maybe I am not understanding what to do here? I opened up the Search/Replace function, and put </p>(.)(.) <p>([a-z]) into the "Find" box, and then \3 into the Replace box, but when I clicked "Replace All" I got the error "The search term was replaced 0 times". Do you know what I am doing wrong?

Have you checked the "regular expression" in the search box?

Regards - John

[leday]

Yes, same result. This is what a section of my code looks like under Code view, so you can see what I am dealing with. These sentences should be all run together in the same paragraph:

<p class="calibre1">adding another runnel of blood to the countless wet trails already there. The man who had once been</p>

<p class="calibre1">named Lord Death barely flinched. Over the years, pain had become a familiar friend. If Vadim Maur</p>

<p class="calibre1">flayed the very skin from his bones, Shan doubted he would do more than groan even while his body</p>

<p class="calibre1">writhed. Except for Elfeya. It was agony for her to watch his punishment, and her agony wounded Shan</p>

<p class="calibre1">in ways the High Mage's worst blows never could. When he would have slipped forever into the hazy,</p>

[theducks]

Originally Posted by leday

Yes, same result. This is what a section of my code looks like under Code view, so you can see what I am dealing with. These sentences should be all run together in the same paragraph:

<p class="calibre1">adding another runnel of blood to the countless wet trails already there. The man who had once been</p>

<p class="calibre1">named Lord Death barely flinched. Over the years, pain had become a familiar friend. If Vadim Maur</p>

<p class="calibre1">flayed the very skin from his bones, Shan doubted he would do more than groan even while his body</p>

<p class="calibre1">writhed. Except for Elfeya. It was agony for her to watch his punishment, and her agony wounded Shan</p>

<p class="calibre1">in ways the High Mage's worst blows never could. When he would have slipped forever into the hazy,</p>

That is because the search term assumed (used) a generic <p> tag
It should us what you have in that location

<p class="calibre1">

And before you ever "Replace all"
TEST with a few "Replace"'s for unwanted side effects

[leday]

OK, that worked better, but now instead of putting a blank space it does this, actually putting the "/3" into the text. Do you know what is causing that?:

\3Vadim Maur backed away from his two Fey captives. The cold sweat of terror—something he'd\3not felt in centuries—trickled down his spine.\3The v'En Celay matepair lay motionless on the dirty stone floor of their cage. The sudden blaze of\3light that had enveloped them was gone, and the broken shards of what had been sel'dor manacles and

[Perkin]

Using you example texts

Search for

</p>(.)(.)  <p class="calibre1">([a-z])

and replace with

 \3

The \3 means to replace with the 3rd stored value from the search
which will be the lowercase letter at the beginning of the new paragraph.

(The reason I also store the two newlines is that I have a very similar one, and use this to differentiate between my two search values and then have a different replace value.)

[leday]

That worked a lot better, Thank you. I still had to go through the chapter and tweak a number of paragraph breaks that didn't wrap properly for some reason, but it did work a lot better overall.