Help! How do I remove unwanted paragraph breaks?

[ElMiko]

I have an epub file where at the end of each line, there is a carriage return. Obviously, this makes reflow a gigantic mess. Now, I could go through and delete every single carriage return manually in an .rtf, but what I'd really like to be able to do is remove the unwanted carriage returns as batch via an HTML editor (ie Sigil). Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to do it.

Here's are two sample paragraphs of what I have:

Spoiler:

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">She who had been Florence Flannery noted with a careless eye the stains</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">of wet on the dusty stairs, and with a glance ill used to observance of</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">domesticities looked up for damp or dripping ceilings. The dim-walled</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">staircase revealed nothing but more dust, yet this would serve as a peg</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">for ill-humor to hang on, so Florence pouted. "An ill, muddy place,"</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">said she, who loved gilding and gimcracks and mirrors reflecting velvet</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">chairs, and flounced away to the upper chamber, lifting frilled skirts</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">contemptuously high. Her husband followed; they had been married a week</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">and there had never been any happiness in their wilful passion. Daniel</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">Shute did not now look for any; in the disgust of this draggled</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">homecoming he wondered what had induced him to marry the woman and how</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">soon he would come to hate her.</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><br class="calibre4" /></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">As she stood in the big bedroom he watched her with dislike; her tawdry</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">charms of vulgar prettiness had once been delightful to his dazed senses</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">and muddled wits, but here, in his old home, washed by the fine Devon</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">air, his sight was clearer and she appeared coarse as a poppy at the far</span></p>

<p class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2 calibre3">end of August.</span></p>

Anyone have any advice?

[Serpentine]

This should do what you want. It is very specific to your example. If it butchers other formatting, well provide more sample text, but this is the easiest way to do it:

Find: </span></p>\s+<p[^<>]*><span[^<>]*>
Replace : // a space character, i.e hit spacebar once

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by Serpentine

I don't have Sigil on this box, so I haven't tested that this will work with the regex engine used by the current version. However this should do what you want (It is specific to your example - you could make the tags conditional to be more accepting)

Find: </span></p>\s+<p[^<>]*><span[^<>]*>
Replace : // a space character, i.e hit spacebar

yep, works fine with ElMikos sample

[ElMiko]

You're awesome. I'm not even going to guess at how many hours you've saved me (or how many of my precious few remaining threads of sanity)

At the risk of trying your patience, could either of you please break down for me what that expression meant? specifically, this part "\s+". I've tried several times to get a working understanding of regex and come up woefully short.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

You're awesome. I'm not even going to guess at how many hours you've saved me (or how many of my precious few remaining threads of sanity)

At the risk of trying your patience, could either of you please break down for me what that expression meant? specifically, this part "\s+". I've tried several times to get a working understanding of regex and come up woefully short.

one or more 'whitespace' characters. space (all flavors),tab,CRLF

Read the REGEX tutorial by Manichean in the Calibre forum.
I had avoided REGEX pain for years. He made it clear and (mostly) simple.

[ElMiko]

Thanks to all!

[ldolse]

As an FYI this logic is built into Calibre's Heuristics functions, with a number of expansions and safeguards to prevent false positives. Just do an ePub->ePub conversion with Heuristics' 'Unwrap lines' enabled.

[tsolignani]

Originally Posted by ldolse

As an FYI this logic is built into Calibre's Heuristics functions, with a number of expansions and safeguards to prevent false positives. Just do an ePub->ePub conversion with Heuristics' 'Unwrap lines' enabled.

Wonderful! That did the trick for me!

Thank you.


–
cordialmente,
[Promotion deleted - MODERATOR]