View Single Post
Old 12-24-2023, 01:28 AM   #11
Tex2002ans
Wizard
Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Tex2002ans ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 2,306
Karma: 13057279
Join Date: Jul 2012
Device: Kobo Forma, Nook
Hey begtognen. Welcome to MobileRead.

Quote:
Originally Posted by begtognen View Post
I'm in the process of converting my DOCX file into an ebook.

[...]

Now, though, all of my blank lines that are meant to be there (like between two scenes) are gone.
What you want is called a "scenebreak".

These are gaps or symbols after the previous scene ended and the new one begins.

- - -

Personally, I'd STRONGLY:
  • recommend using centered asterisks (or some other symbol)
  • be AGAINST using just "a gap" / "blank lines"

especially in the case of ebooks.

YES to asterisks/symbols:

Code:
   And then he got shot.

            * * *

Diane woke up in bed the next day.
NO to simple gap + noindent:

Code:
   And then he got shot.


Diane woke up in bed the next day.
I explained all the pros/cons + exact reasoning how/why in this 2019 thread:

Quote:
Originally Posted by begtognen View Post
(I don't know another way to get the indents to work, as I'm using LibreOffice Writer, not Word, and haven't been able to find the styles info that's available for Word about alternative indents for LibreOffice Writer.)
LibreOffice? Fantastic!

I've written over a thousand step-by-step LibreOffice tutorials and posts within the past 2 years.

How to Create Scenebreaks Using Styles

I strongly suggest creating 2 simple Styles:
  • scenebreak
    • = centered + have a gap above/below.
    • Apply this to your asterisks/symbols.
  • first
    • = no indent.
    • Apply this to the very first line of your chapters/scenes.

Then you just mark all your Styles:

Code:
    Chapter 1: The Beginning        <---- "Heading 2" Style

It was a dark and stormy night. All <---- "first" Style
was quiet in the western front.
    This was the tale of intrigue   <---- "Text Body" Style
and espionage.

           * * *                    <---- "scenebreak" Style

Tommy woke up in a cold sweat.      <---- "first" Style
Bing, bang, boom. Problem solved. This will transfer over nicely from LibreOffice into your ebook.

I wrote about this exact thing way back in:

Since then, I went on a complete streak over on the LibreOffice subreddit:

If you need more, I strongly recommend typing this in your favorite search engine:
  • Styles Tex2002ans site:reddit.com/r/LibreOffice
  • scenebreaks Tex2002ans site:mobileread.com

That'll lead you to hundreds and hundreds of posts where I/we covered this topic in detail over the years.

- - -

Side Note: And, make sure you're on the latest LibreOffice 7.6.

They added this really fantastic "Styles Highlighter" feature called "Spotlight":

Click image for larger version

Name:	LibreOffice.7.6.4.-.Spotlight.Styles.Highlighter.OFF.png
Views:	301
Size:	79.3 KB
ID:	205389 Click image for larger version

Name:	LibreOffice.7.6.4.-.Spotlight.Styles.Highlighter.ON.png
Views:	338
Size:	82.6 KB
ID:	205388

You get to it by:
  • View > Styles (F11)
  • Alllll the way in the bottom right, you should see a little checkbox called "Spotlight".

After turning it on, it numbers/colors all the Styles currently used in your document. This easily lets you see+tag+clean them up.

It was first described back in 2019 in this blog post:

and finally made it into LibreOffice in 2023.

- - -

Quote:
Originally Posted by begtognen View Post
I do have the paragraph styles set correctly in Writer [...] but the indent didn't appear in the converted Calibre ebook [...]
You may also be interested in my comment from 2022:

Good idea going from LibreOffice into a temporary DOCX, then converting that to EPUB.

The ODT->EPUB tools, sadly, aren't as clean as the DOCX->EPUB tools, so a lot of stuff like Styles get broken in the conversion.

But, if you designed your original document super cleanly with Styles, so much of that stuff should transfer over to ebook. Then, you just need to understand the basics of HTML+CSS in order to tweak your EPUB code slightly.

For example, if you marked all your "first" paragraphs + "scenebreaks", then it would be as simple as going into the HTML and seeing this:

Code:
<h2>Chapter 1: The Beginning</h2>

<p class="first">It was a dark and stormy night. All was quiet in the western front.</p>

<p>This was the tale of intrigue and espionage.</p>

<p class="scenebreak">* * *</p>

<p class="first">Tommy woke up in a cold sweat.</p>
and tweaking your CSS:

Code:
p.first {
  text-indent: 0;
}

p.scenebreak {
  margin-top: 1em;
  margin-below: 1em;
  text-align: center;
  text-indent: 0;
}

Last edited by Tex2002ans; 12-24-2023 at 02:20 AM.
Tex2002ans is offline   Reply With Quote