MobileRead Forums - Paragraph spacing not working?

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Paragraph spacing not working?

Forgive me for being a novice at this, but I'm having an issue with paragraph indentation. I'm editing an epub file in Sigil, but when I read it in Marvin 3 changing the setting for paragraph spacing does nothing. I can change everything else in Marvin 3; text size, margin size, line spacing, indentation. But when I try to raise or lower the paragraph spacing nothing happens.

Here's the HTML (I removed all but the first couple of paragraphs):

Quote:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title></title>
</head>

<body>
<div class="s" style="text-indent: 14.15pt;">
<h3><span style="font-size: 1em; font-weight: bold; text-indent: 14.15pt;">CHAPTER ONE</span><br/></h3>
</div>

<div class="calibre1">
<div class="calibre1">
<div class="s" style="text-indent: 14.15pt;">

<p>Father walked into the living room.</p>
<p>"What have you been up to?" he asked Mary who was watching television by herself.</p>

<p>"Nothing much she said," she said. "I've been waiting for cartoons to start, but there's nothing on right now."</p>

<p>"Then you'd better move over," Father said, "Football game's about to start."</p>
<p></p>

<p></p>

</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

#1) you have no stylesheet, or Margins (top, Bottom) therefore you get whatever the render engine has for <p> tags

Originally, the code did have a style, but it made no difference:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"

  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">



<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>

  <title></title>

</head>



<body>

  <div class="s" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.15pt;">

    <h3 class="calibre2" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><span style="font-size: 1em; font-weight: bold; text-indent: 14.15pt;">CHAPTER ONE</span><br/></h3>

  </div>



  <div class="calibre1">

    <div class="calibre1">

      <div class="s" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.15pt;">

        <p class="calibre2" style="margin: 1em 0px;">&nbsp;</p>



          <p class="calibre2" style="margin: 1em 0px;">Father walked into the living room.</p>

I believe people are wondering where classes like calibre1 and calibre1 are defined. There should be a stylesheet referred to by the XHTML. See https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_howto.asp

To be honest, I haven't a clue. I didn't write the code, I'm just trying to edit it so that the book reads better on my device.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wellesradio (Post 4071771)

To be honest, I haven't a clue. I didn't write the code, I'm just trying to edit it so that the book reads better on my device.

In order to edit an eBook you need to have at least some knowledge of html and CSS.

There are plenty of basic tutorials on the internet. I think there are even a couple on this site. See the Wiki link below.

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EPub_Tutorial

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeterT (Post 4071764)

I believe people are wondering where classes like calibre1 and calibre1 are defined. There should be a stylesheet referred to by the XHTML. See https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_howto.asp

Looking those over, they were very helpful for future reference.
I have a better idea now of how I can define certain margins, but what would when I don’t want any particular definition so that I can change that in my reader (Marvin 3)?

Quote:

Originally Posted by wellesradio (Post 4071829)

Then ensure that base margins are not defined internally. Generally, I set the default margins to 0 0 0 0 and then control the left/right margins from my ereader.

OTOH, I personally found Marvin even with CSS enabled was not even near the top in displaying an epub the way the publisher intended and it's epub3 support pathetic. Admittedly this was using the free nagware version where the "basic" epub3 support is close to non-existent. Claiming epub3 support and not being able to open an epub3 nav document? And yes, epub3 ebooks without a ncx file are becoming a lot more common these days.

You need to select "Publisher's Layout" in Marvin...see the instructions I left in your post in the Marvin forum.

After doing that, Marvin still allows you to change margins, font-size, etc.

Also, the others are referring to the fact that your html file is not "linked" to the css file...in Sigil simply right click (or multi-select) on the file(s) you want to link in the Book Browser section (usually on the left of the window) and select "Link Stylesheets". Without a linked stylesheet all of those class="..." tags won't reference any of the styling.

It will end up looking something like this:

Code:

<head>

  <title>Cover</title>

  <link href="../Styles/styles.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"/>

</head>

You might look at my style sheet at https://notjohnkdp.blogspot.com/2013...yle-sheet.html -- free for the taking; adapt at your pleasure.

It should go in the Sigil "Styles" folder, and note Dion's pointer above. In this case you'd name the file styles.css

Note that I never use an absolute measurement such as points, but rather ems (and maybe percents; I don't remember).

The <p></p> tags are not displayed because they are empty.
It might not exist that it would be the same.

Write an unbreakable space inside for "validated" this.
Search/Replace: <p></p> => <p> </p>