[AlanHK]

I used the plugin to import an HTML file exported from Word as "web page, filtered".


Sample HTML para:


<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:6.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:0cm;text-indent:36.0pt'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;letter-spacing:
-.2pt;font-style:normal'>And yet, despite his distinguished ancestry, despite
his celebrated historical novels, and despite his glorious Boer </span><span
style='font-size:18.0pt;letter-spacing:-.1pt;font-style:normal'>War record,
Conan Doyle is best known to the world for </span><span style='font-size:18.0pt;
letter-spacing:-.25pt;font-style:normal'>having created Sherlock Holmes.</span></p>


Output in epub:

<p class="Normal sgc-4"><span class="sgc-1">And yet, despite his distinguished ancestry, despite his celebrated historical novels, and despite his glorious Boer</span> <span class="sgc-2">War record, Conan Doyle is best known to the world for</span> <span class="sgc-3">having created Sherlock Holmes.</span></p>

p.sgc-4 {
margin-top: 0.5em;
margin-right: 0;
margin-bottom: 0.5em;
margin-left: 0;
text-indent: 36.0pt
}
span.sgc-3 {
font-size: 1.5em;
letter-spacing: 0em;
font-style: normal
}
span.sgc-2 {
font-size: 1.5em;
letter-spacing: 0em;
font-style: normal
}
span.sgc-1 {
font-size: 1.5em;
letter-spacing: 0em;
font-style: normal
}


For an entire book, there were about 300 styles created, many identical as above or only differing by "letter-spacing". The 3 styles here I assume were rounded down from the small letter spacing (-.2pt, -.1pt, -.25pt) in the source. Would have been nice if then they were combined into a single style.

After wasting a few hours trying to clean that up in Sigil, I went back to the source HTML and deleted all the letter-spacing styling with a text editor and reimported.
Now there was a manageable number of styles; though again, several were identically defined.

I suggest that the importer just ignore all letter-spacing formatting. Or at least, have that as a default option, though I've never seen any ebook where letter spacing was appropriate in body text. And ideally, merge styles with identical definitions.