CSS command instead of remove spacing between paragraphs

ryder · 01-19-2025, 11:17 AM

Hi everybody, is this code correct to use instead of the "remove spacing between paragraphs" in calibre or would there be some other problems created with it:

p {
margin: 0 !important;
padding: 0;
}

It looks great so far and there are no bugs found by calibre after converting.
Thanks a lot for the help.

Karellen · 01-19-2025, 01:38 PM

I don't think you need the !important.

For the standard paragraph, I use...
p {
display: block;
margin-top: 0;
margin-bottom: 0;
text-indent: 1em;
}

Then, for those paragraphs that don't use an indent I use...
.noindent {
text-indent: 0;
}

Also, you need to check the css for the <body> tag in case it needs tweaking.

Great that it is slowly coming together for you. What ereader are you using?

And if it helps, here is my css in full which I adjust as needed on a per-book basis. Might give you some pointers...
https://paste.kodi.tv/rovohaxatu

ryder · 01-19-2025, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karellen

I don't think you need the !important.

For the standard paragraph, I use...
p {
display: block;
margin-top: 0;
margin-bottom: 0;
text-indent: 1em;
}

Then, for those paragraphs that don't use an indent I use...
.noindent {
text-indent: 0;
}

Also, you need to check the css for the <body> tag in case it needs tweaking.

Great that it is slowly coming together for you. What ereader are you using?

And if it helps, here is my css in full which I adjust as needed on a per-book basis. Might give you some pointers...
https://paste.kodi.tv/rovohaxatu

Thank you. I will try that. I am using a clara 2e. The last reader was a sony prs-t3. It handled my ebooks much better. Don't know why Kobo is so lazy with formatting and such. Are you editing from paragraph to paragraph or just via the conversion tool?

Karellen · 01-19-2025, 02:12 PM

I never use the conversion tool, nor any plugins. I just recode/reformat the entire epub. Main method I use is regex to make bulk fixes

ryder · 01-19-2025, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karellen

I never use the conversion tool, nor any plugins. I just recode/reformat the entire epub. Main method I use is regex to make bulk fixes

This sounds like a lot of work if you have many ebooks. Unfortunately I don't have the time for that. So the conversion tool is my goal.

I have noticed some ebooks had a black font color after the conversion. On the reader they look normal, but not when viewed in calibre (black letters on grey background). Is this a bug, because I use the dark mode on windows or is the css somehow broken? Who noticed this before?

Karellen · 01-19-2025, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ryder

This sounds like a lot of work if you have many ebooks. Unfortunately I don't have the time for that. So the conversion tool is my goal.

I have noticed some ebooks had a black font color after the conversion. On the reader they look normal, but not when viewed in calibre (black letters on grey background). Is this a bug, because I use the dark mode on windows or is the css somehow broken? Who noticed this before?

Sorry, I don't know about the issue of font colours. All I can say is that blindly pressing buttons hoping for a perfect outcome is misguided at best. You really need to understand what you are trying to accomplish, and by that you need to understand the basics of epub structure, css, html, xml and regex.

I started this about 4 years ago, and I had no clue on any of that. NO CLUE. You should have seen the mess I made of the first book. But quite a bit of reading, experimenting and it started to sink in. Then came across this forum, and picked up even more pointers from the very helpful members here.

Now about 500+ books later, I can do it in my sleep... almost. A somewhat clean book can be fixed within half an hour, but some books are a total mess and can take a few hours.

As for having time... what is the rush? Do you have a deadline that requires you to rush these books into distribution? Slow down, understand what it is you are doing, and you will save yourself quite a bit of stress and frustration when things aren't working out.

DNSB · 01-19-2025, 03:19 PM

For what little it may be worth, I use the following for my base body and p CSS:

Code:

body {
  display: block;
  font-size: 1em;
  margin: 0 0 0 0;
  padding: 0 0 0 0;
  text-indent: 0;
  line-height: 1.05;
  widows: 1;
  orphans: 1;
}

p {
  display: block;
  text-indent: 0;
  line-height: 1.05;
  margin: 0 0 0 0;
  padding: 0.1em 0 0 0;
  margin-block-end: 0em;
}

The "padding: 0.1em 0 0 0;" is to add a minimal spacing between paragraphs which I personally happen to prefer.

ryder · 01-19-2025, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karellen

Sorry, I don't know about the issue of font colours. All I can say is that blindly pressing buttons hoping for a perfect outcome is misguided at best. You really need to understand what you are trying to accomplish, and by that you need to understand the basics of epub structure, css, html, xml and regex.

I started this about 4 years ago, and I had no clue on any of that. NO CLUE. You should have seen the mess I made of the first book. But quite a bit of reading, experimenting and it started to sink in. Then came across this forum, and picked up even more pointers from the very helpful members here.

Now about 500+ books later, I can do it in my sleep... almost. A somewhat clean book can be fixed within half an hour, but some books are a total mess and can take a few hours.

As for having time... what is the rush? Do you have a deadline that requires you to rush these books into distribution? Slow down, understand what it is you are doing, and you will save yourself quite a bit of stress and frustration when things aren't working out.

There is no rush actually, but family, job and sports are taken a big chunk of my precious free time. So the desire for a magic bullet fix is there. But I guess some ebooks need more work than others. Fortunately the ebooks from the stores are pretty decent formatted nowadays. I still remember the time when ebooks looked really horrible on ereaders back in 2010. Let's hope that one day the ereader will do this task all by themselves, no matter what ebook format style you throw at them.

ryder · 01-19-2025, 07:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

For what little it may be worth, I use the following for my base body and p CSS:

Code:

body {
  display: block;
  font-size: 1em;
  margin: 0 0 0 0;
  padding: 0 0 0 0;
  text-indent: 0;
  line-height: 1.05;
  widows: 1;
  orphans: 1;
}

p {
  display: block;
  text-indent: 0;
  line-height: 1.05;
  margin: 0 0 0 0;
  padding: 0.1em 0 0 0;
  margin-block-end: 0em;
}

The "padding: 0.1em 0 0 0;" is to add a minimal spacing between paragraphs which I personally happen to prefer.

Thanks for your code. I will try that as well. What is the meaning of widows: 1; orphans: 1; Just one word at the beginning and end of a paragraph is allowed?

JSWolf · 01-19-2025, 07:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ryder

Thank you. I will try that. I am using a clara 2e. The last reader was a sony prs-t3. It handled my ebooks much better. Don't know why Kobo is so lazy with formatting and such. Are you editing from paragraph to paragraph or just via the conversion tool?

This CSS for p is what I use. I edit the eBooks. I do not convert ePub to ePub. I also remove all of the <p class="indent"> (or whatever class they use for the main paragraph style and replace it with <p>. It's much neater code.

Code:

p {
  margin-top: 0;
  margin-bottom: 0;
  widows: 1;
  orphans: 1;
  text-indent: 1.2em;
}

JSWolf · 01-19-2025, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ryder

This sounds like a lot of work if you have many ebooks. Unfortunately I don't have the time for that. So the conversion tool is my goal.

I have noticed some ebooks had a black font color after the conversion. On the reader they look normal, but not when viewed in calibre (black letters on grey background). Is this a bug, because I use the dark mode on windows or is the css somehow broken? Who noticed this before?

That's why you have to hand edit the eBooks because you cannot automate everything as you don't know what the code looks like. So while the conversion may work in most cases, there are those where it will fail. By hand editing, you can fix other issues besides a color code for the text.

JSWolf · 01-19-2025, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ryder

Thanks for your code. I will try that as well. What is the meaning of widows: 1; orphans: 1; Just one word at the beginning and end of a paragraph is allowed?

I use the following body code because I cannot stand paragraph spaces no matter how small they are.

Code:

body {
  widows: 1;
  orphans: 1;
  margin-top: 0;
  margin-right: 0;
  margin-bottom: 0;
  margin-left: 0;
  text-align: justify;
}

Widows and orphans have a default value of 2. If at the end of the page, 1 line of the last paragraph is left, it will drop to the next page. You would need at least two lines of the last paragraph on the page. Windows deals with the end of the paragraph. So if one line drops to the next page, the window will make it so another line joins it and there are two lines. Basically, windows and orphans set to 1 turns them off.

slm · 01-19-2025, 08:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ryder

Hi everybody, is this code correct to use instead of the "remove spacing between paragraphs" in calibre or would there be some other problems created with it:

p {
margin: 0 !important;
padding: 0;
}

It looks great so far and there are no bugs found by calibre after converting.
Thanks a lot for the help.

I think when you are just adding CSS via the conversion tool, the !important is important.

The reason I think this, although I haven't tried your code, is that many years ago (before Kindles and Kobos had much ability to darken fonts or select really dark fonts) I set my conversions to to the equivalent with font-weight and it worked very well. I originally did

*{font-weight:bold}

but the results were inconsistent.

Kovid suggested that I add !important, and it worked consistently.

Of course, I'm a lot less picky than some of the folk on this thread.

Good luck.

DNSB · 01-19-2025, 09:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ryder

Thanks for your code. I will try that as well. What is the meaning of widows: 1; orphans: 1; Just one word at the beginning and end of a paragraph is allowed?

Basically, you can have a line/word by itself at the top or bottom of a page. 1 is the lowest setting. If you set them to 2, you would have a minimum of two lines from a paragraph at the top or bottom of a page. To see the difference, widows would be alone at the top of a page while orphans would be alone at the bottom of the page. Of course, some people define it the other way around with widows at the bottom of the page and orphans alone at the top of a page.

Basically, since ereaders do not modify the line spacing the way that physical books can, you end up with varying gaps at the bottom of a page which the widows/orphans setting helps to reduce. In theory, an ereader could use microjustication (small changes to spacing between words and letters and lines) to make text more even on page but that takes quite a bit of CPU power and memory which most ereaders do not have.

nabsltd · 01-24-2025, 03:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

The "padding: 0.1em 0 0 0;" is to add a minimal spacing between paragraphs which I personally happen to prefer.

Do you use padding so it doesn't collapse? I use margin-bottom: 0.1em; specifically because I want it to collapse if the next paragraph happens to have a larger top margin (like after a section break).

01-19-2025, 11:17 AM	#1
ryder Member Posts: 23 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2024 Device: Clara 2E	CSS command instead of remove spacing between paragraphs Hi everybody, is this code correct to use instead of the "remove spacing between paragraphs" in calibre or would there be some other problems created with it: p { margin: 0 !important; padding: 0; } It looks great so far and there are no bugs found by calibre after converting. Thanks a lot for the help.

01-19-2025, 01:38 PM	#2
Karellen Wizard Posts: 1,592 Karma: 9499994 Join Date: Sep 2021 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Libra 2	https://www2.mobileread.com/i/mr/editor/menupop.gif I don't think you need the !important. For the standard paragraph, I use... p { display: block; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0; text-indent: 1em; } Then, for those paragraphs that don't use an indent I use... .noindent { text-indent: 0; } Also, you need to check the css for the <body> tag in case it needs tweaking. Great that it is slowly coming together for you. What ereader are you using? And if it helps, here is my css in full which I adjust as needed on a per-book basis. Might give you some pointers... https://paste.kodi.tv/rovohaxatu

01-19-2025, 03:19 PM	#7
DNSB Bibliophagist Posts: 44,451 Karma: 167726581 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Vancouver Device: Kobo Sage, Libra Colour, Lenovo M8 FHD, Paperwhite 4, Tolino epos	For what little it may be worth, I use the following for my base body and p CSS: Code: body { display: block; font-size: 1em; margin: 0 0 0 0; padding: 0 0 0 0; text-indent: 0; line-height: 1.05; widows: 1; orphans: 1; } p { display: block; text-indent: 0; line-height: 1.05; margin: 0 0 0 0; padding: 0.1em 0 0 0; margin-block-end: 0em; } The "padding: 0.1em 0 0 0;" is to add a minimal spacing between paragraphs which I personally happen to prefer.

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01-19-2025, 02:12 PM	#4
Karellen Wizard Posts: 1,592 Karma: 9499994 Join Date: Sep 2021 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Libra 2	I never use the conversion tool, nor any plugins. I just recode/reformat the entire epub. Main method I use is regex to make bulk fixes

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