Non-breaking space

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Personally, I think the best bet is to join the punctuation (emdashes, endashes and ellipses being the big offenders) to the prior word, and leave a space after. This gives you a "split the baby" approach. I find an emdash starting a new line, or an ellipsis, far odder than ending one. FWIW; everyone has their own opinions on this topic.

Hitch

Thanks for all the suggestions; you've all given me a lot to think about.

Hitch, could you tell me please what you mean by 'join the punctuation... to the prior word'? How do you do that?

Jon, I'm afraid I like ndashes a lot better than mdashes - perhaps because I have some visual impairment. As Hitch implies tastes vary.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Thanks for all the suggestions; you've all given me a lot to think about.

Hitch, could you tell me please what you mean by 'join the punctuation... to the prior word'? How do you do that?

Jon, I'm afraid I like ndashes a lot better than mdashes - perhaps because I have some visual impairment. As Hitch implies tastes vary.

But if you are changing mdashes to ndashes in a book for posting to MR, please let us know you've done this so we can decide if we want that version or not. Thanks.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But if you are changing mdashes to ndashes in a book for posting to MR, please let us know you've done this so we can decide if we want that version or not. Thanks.

Wolfie, don't be ungracious. If he posts a book to the MR library, and he's used ndashes instead of em, you can always regex them back.

Alex: I didn't mean anything exotic. Simply that I'd type/regex them like so:

But wait--" John held his breath...yadda.
She wondered... did he mean what she thought he meant?

So that the code would look thus:

But wait—" John held his breath...yadda.
She wondered… did he mean what she thought he meant?

And those are regular spaces in there, not nbsp's. This allows the words to break on Kindle devices (yes, I know what forums we're in), which if joined, they wouldn't do.

We vary, here, in final output, because our clients get their knickers in a twist, particularly about ellipses. Honestly, until I started this business, I had no idea that so few people understood the difference between an ellipsis and an emdash, nor that so many thought that a 4-dot ellipsis was a "real" thing, in, or at the end of, a sentence, nor that so many could type either so many different ways. It's...interesting.

We see the ellipsis used to mean a sudden break in speech all the time, and an emdash used to mean trailing off. There are actual discussions about those being the "real" usages for those, in the KDP forums (to which I invariably reply, because it pains me). And, as I said, typographically, man, they are all over the map. They want a space before and after (either or both). A space after (ditto), space before...it's pretty damn endless.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Wolfie, don't be ungracious. If he posts a book to the MR library, and he's used ndashes instead of em, you can always regex them back.

But I can only do this if I know that's what was changed. That's why we need to know if anything is modified so we can either undo it or just ignore that specific eBook. It's not being ungracious to want to know what alterations where made if any were made. I don't want to read a 19th century book that's been modernized. I want to read it in way it was written even if that's not an easy read.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But if you are changing mdashes to ndashes in a book for posting to MR, please let us know you've done this so we can decide if we want that version or not. Thanks.

Thanks, Jon

No, I don't think it is necessary to say that I've changed mdashes to ndashes. Anyone who reads the post introducing the ebook will know that there are changes.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Alex: I didn't mean anything exotic. Simply that I'd type/regex them like so:

But wait--" John held his breath...yadda.
She wondered... did he mean what she thought he meant?

So that the code would look thus:

But wait—" John held his breath...yadda.
She wondered… did he mean what she thought he meant?

Hitch

Thanks, Hitch. And here I thought you had a magic cure for me.

(That's the first smiley I've ever done.)

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But if you are changing mdashes to ndashes in a book for posting to MR

Changing from where? From the PG source? The dashes in the PG sources are not intended to represent the printed book, they are (or should be) consistenly rendered as "--" without spaces, regardless of which kind of dash and spaces the printed book had. The same happens with "thought breaks", which are always five asterisks separated by a number of spaces, even if the printed book has nothing but some vertical spacing.

[Notjohn]

>So why would non-breaking spaces be put in an eBook where they have no need to be there?

I have found that editing in Book View in Sigil will insert a nbsp whenever I tap the space bar.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Thanks, Jon

No, I don't think it is necessary to say that I've changed mdashes to ndashes. Anyone who reads the post introducing the ebook will know that there are changes.

They'd only know this if you posted saying so. And yes, I do think it's important to document your changes so anyone who wants to undo them will know what needs to be done to undo them.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

They'd only know this if you posted saying so. And yes, I do think it's important to document your changes so anyone who wants to undo them will know what needs to be done to undo them.

I agree with JSWolf. Although I rarely, if ever, change the style from the PDF scan I work from. (I try to match the text exactly).

There was also some discussion of typos back here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=233132

I give an in-depth changelog stating the EXACT typo corrections I fixed:

Page ##: par. ##: typo/explanation

Here is the sentence where there was a tpyo.

Then for sweeping "style" changes, I give just an overall statement. For example, in the journal I am converting, in a bunch of the references, there was a publisher that was written in 4 different ways:

LibertyClassics
Liberty Classics
LibertyClassics
Liberty Classics

I normalized them all to "Liberty Classics".

Or when dealing with a page number reference:

See on this Hülsmann (1996, p. 5 ff).

sometimes there was a space before "ff." or "f.", and sometimes no period. I normalized them all to have NO space and ALWAYS a period afterwards.

(I also have all the documents on hand so I can easily generate an EXACT code comparison if needed (using Beyond Compare). I showed/attached an example in the typo topic).

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

They'd only know this if you posted saying so. And yes, I do think it's important to document your changes so anyone who wants to undo them will know what needs to be done to undo them.

Thanks, Jon, but I think we may be inadvertently talking past each other. If I understand you correctly you prefer to see ebooks look like the print book appeared when published. I prefer to see even 19th century books look like a current Penguin ebook or print book, and (I think) I identify enough changes that people can easily tell that changes have been made, and that the versions I design don't look like a 19th century print book. So I don't think I need to mention that I have changed mdashes to ndashes. Even if I didn't change mdashes to ndashes you still won't like the ebooks I design.

I apologise in advance if I have misunderstood you or misquoted you.

[eschwartz]

@AlexBell,

Whatever you do, just don't change HTML entities to unicode codepoints. That would cause a deep disturbance in the underpinning nature of the ebook. We may never hear the end of it.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

@AlexBell,

Whatever you do, just don't change HTML entities to unicode codepoints. That would cause a deep disturbance in the underpinning nature of the ebook. We may never hear the end of it.

Thanks for the warning. I don't think I do that - certainly not deliberately - since I don't know how to. Could you tell me please how I can be sure I'm not changing HTML entities to unicode codepoints? Or am I missing something?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Thanks for the warning. I don't think I do that - certainly not deliberately - since I don't know how to. Could you tell me please how I can be sure I'm not changing HTML entities to unicode codepoints? Or am I missing something?

Well, apparently there are a bunch of other meaningless changes you've officially been warned off of doing, I figured this made as much sense as the rest. (I was also going for the most meaningless change I could possibly think of off the top of my head. I suppose indenting tags à la Pretty Print and Beautify would be marginally more meaningless...)

I suppose I could've made my meaning blatantly obvious with a row (two rows?) of smilies.




But where's the fun in blatant?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Well, apparently there are a bunch of other meaningless changes you've officially been warned off of doing, I figured this made as much sense as the rest. (I was also going for the most meaningless change I could possibly think of off the top of my head. I suppose indenting tags à la Pretty Print and Beautify would be marginally more meaningless...)

I suppose I could've made my meaning blatantly obvious with a row (two rows?) of smilies.




But where's the fun in blatant?

Man, and people say I'm mean.

;-)

Hitch