Assigning paragraph class to multiple paragraphs

[Leonatus]

I'm using a favourite css for my ebooks, containing a "standard" paragraph style with indented first line. There is also a paragraph class for some specific text as poetry etc. with no indenting, italics etc. Opening a book, for example in html, all text is, first of all, assigned to the standard paragraph style, also the poetry. As there are usually many linebreaks, every line appears as separate paragraph, each one indented etc. Until now I manually changed every line, assigning the "poetry" class to all. This is much work.

Is there a way to assign this specific paragraph style to the "bunch" of lines that contain poetry at once, removing the standard pareagraph style? I think this should be possible, but I simply don't find the trick.

Sorry for my difficulties in explaining the problem in English!

[mzmm]

it would help if you could post some of the code you're working with, but from what i understand of your question, you could assign styles to the children (<p> tags) of a container (a <div>) to save yourself some typing:

css:

.myDiv p {
	text-indent:0;
	font-style:italic;
}

html:

<div class="myDiv">
	<p>Some Text</p> <!-- this will have the styles from .myDiv p -->
</div>

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Leonatus

Is there a way to assign this specific paragraph style to the "bunch" of lines that contain poetry at once, removing the standard paragraph style?!

You could wrap unformatted lines in a <div> section with the desired class or simply globally replace the old class name with the new name.
(In Code View, you can also select Mark Text from the Context menu to limit search and replace operations to the selected text.)

[Turtle91]

If your "special" lines are not already marked in some way then you will have to manually go through the book to make changes. However, you can create a "clip" using the clip editor that will make this process much easier. All you need to do is highlight all the lines you want to "bundle" and then click on the clip to wrap the bundled lines in a container.

I use several but here are a couple of examples:

Div: <div class="">\1</div>
Block: <blockquote class="">\1</blockquote>

Once I use the clip then I just fill in the class I want to use between the quote marks. I definitely use MZMM's technique:

CSS (styled as you desire)
.poetry {margin:2em}
.poetry p {font-style:italic; text-indent:0}

HTML
<div class="poetry">
<p>line 1</p>
<p>line 2</p>
<p>line 3</p>
...
</div>

[Leonatus]

Originally Posted by mzmm

css:

.myDiv p {
	text-indent:0;
	font-style:italic;
}

html:

<div class="myDiv">
	<p>Some Text</p> <!-- this will have the styles from .myDiv p -->
</div>

This is what I have, more or less. The point is that, linking my css to the html text, all paragraphs are formatted as "p". When there is a poem in the text, due to the line breaks, every line is separately formatted as "p", and I had to change, line by line, into ".p1" paragraph class, where I have my poem "specifics".

@Doitsu: How could I achieve the poems becoming unformatted, without changing the formatting manually, line by line? The effect is almost the same as described above.

@Turtle91: Clip Editor, aha, that's probably what I need (first I have to look what is the German translation).

Thanks to all! I really appreciate!

[DaleDe]

For poetry I tend to make a full stanza into one paragraph. I use <br /> for line breaks within the paragraph. This minimizes the need to adjust a large number of paragraphs. But it also minimizes the control you have over formatting but for me it works fine for the occasional poem or lyric in a prose document.

Dale

[Leonatus]

@mzmm: Reading it again, I think I now understood right the container trick. I'll try it soon.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Leonatus

This is what I have, more or less. The point is that, linking my css to the html text, all paragraphs are formatted as "p". When there is a poem in the text, due to the line breaks, every line is separately formatted as "p", and I had to change, line by line, into ".p1" paragraph class, where I have my poem "specifics".

What mzmm means is that you could change the CSS, so that instead of ".p1" you have "div.poetry p". That way you don't have to apply any specific style to poetry lines, as long as they are enclosed in a "<div class="poetry">" block, as the "div.poetry p" selector applies to any <p> inside such a block, with or without class.

Originally Posted by DaleDe

For poetry I tend to make a full stanza into one paragraph. I use <br /> for line breaks within the paragraph. This minimizes the need to adjust a large number of paragraphs. But it also minimizes the control you have over formatting but for me it works fine for the occasional poem or lyric in a prose document.

Sure, the whole point of wrapping each line in a block element is allowing nice linebreaks by using negative text-indents, otherwise I guess you can get pretty much the same result with just <br>.

By the way, I wouldn't recommend using <p> for poetry lines because they are in fact not paragraphs. One could argue that stanzas are sort of paragraphs, but not lines. I'd use <div> or <span> (with display:block). The latter is closer to the real semantics, the former has the advantage of displaying nicely even with CSS disabled (and the disadvantage that you cannot use <p> for stanzas with that). My usual setup:

<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="line">verse line</div>
    <div class="line2">verse line</div>
    <div class="line">verse line</div>
    <div class="line2">verse line</div>
  </div>
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="line">verse line</div>
    <div class="line2">verse line</div>
    <div class="line">verse line</div>
    <div class="line2">verse line</div>
  </div>
</div>

("line" and "line2" have different left margins, to create the desired indent patterns, when needed.)

A bit too verbose, and one could dispose of the class="line" through CSS, but it's usually quite easy to apply this formatting to all kinds of poetry fragments.

[Leonatus]

Originally Posted by Jellby

What mzmm means is that you could change the CSS, so that instead of ".p1" you have "div.poetry p". That way you don't have to apply any specific style to poetry lines, as long as they are enclosed in a "<div class="poetry">" block, as the "div.poetry p" selector applies to any <p> inside such a block, with or without class.


By the way, I wouldn't recommend using <p> for poetry lines because they are in fact not paragraphs. One could argue that stanzas are sort of paragraphs, but not lines. I'd use <div> or <span> (with display:block). The latter is closer to the real semantics, the former has the advantage of displaying nicely even with CSS disabled (and the disadvantage that you cannot use <p> for stanzas with that). My usual setup:

<div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="line">verse line</div>
    <div class="line2">verse line</div>
    <div class="line">verse line</div>
    <div class="line2">verse line</div>
  </div>
  <div class="stanza">
    <div class="line">verse line</div>
    <div class="line2">verse line</div>
    <div class="line">verse line</div>
    <div class="line2">verse line</div>
  </div>
</div>

("line" and "line2" have different left margins, to create the desired indent patterns, when needed.)

A bit too verbose, and one could dispose of the class="line" through CSS, but it's usually quite easy to apply this formatting to all kinds of poetry fragments.

That seems conclusive, and your explanation is very instructive. Thanks a lot!

[mzmm]

this is a bit tangential, but i'm actually kind of surprised that there's no plan to include semantic markup for poetry in HTML5. just came across this article which outlines different markup solutions for poetry, and proposes a, albeit kind of idealistic, set of poetry elements.

i'd actually also agree with Jellby that his <div class="stanza"><div class="line"> arrangement is semantically closer to poetic form than using paragraph elements.

anyone tried concrete poetry with <pre/>? maybe i give it a go later on.

[theducks]

Div, P will reflow, maintaining the style

I feel that Pre turn into total hash if a reflow is needed.

[Leonatus]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Div: <div class="">\1</div>
Block: <blockquote class="">\1</blockquote>

Could you, please, still explain to me the signification of "\1"?

I already read, but don't actually remember the meaning of "blockquote".
Thanks in advance!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Leonatus

Could you, please, still explain to me the signification of "\1"?

I already read, but don't actually remember the meaning of "blockquote".
Thanks in advance!

\1 is the first captured item in a REGEX replacement

"The Moon is Blue not very often"

Search: The (.+) is (.+) (not) 
Replace: The Sun is Red,  \2 is \3 the color of the \1 

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Leonatus

Could you, please, still explain to me the signification of "\1"?

I already read, but don't actually remember the meaning of "blockquote".
Thanks in advance!

From the Sigil Manual http://web.sigil.googlecode.com/git/...ext/clips.html

Using Clips to Format Text

Clips provide a way to paste text before and after selected text – to give you a basic ability to format your text.

If you define a clip using "\1" in the text then Clips will treat this as a Regex replacement command. When you paste the clip, the "\1" will be replaced with whatever text was selected.

[theducks]

Nothing like me missing the correct context of the question

Basically using the \1 in the middle of a clip, wraps the clip around the selected text (AFAIK you can't multi select so \2> is not valid)