Too big gaps between paragraphs, sentences split with break in between....

martienne · 07-09-2011, 07:58 PM

Some files off the internet have lost a lot of their formatting and are in a bad shape - for example paragraphs with several lines between them (instead of just one), sentences split in the middle with several empty lines between etc.
Or for exampke a diamond shaped question mark replacing characters like apostrophes.

What are some tricks to clean up files in such a bad shape?

nrapallo · 07-09-2011, 10:39 PM

Without any example files it's hard to say...

You can try to cleanse the file by converting the empty lines using search and replace constructs and/or converting to html each paragraph block with <p> which inherently ignores whitespace.

The strange characters you see in place of apostrophes is a character encoding problem i.e. UTF-8 vs ANSI vs dos text.

I try to always work in html and try to avoid literal characters for extended dos characters and use their equivalent html codes i.e. © for ©

Your best tool would be a powerful text editor like textplus or notepad+ and some knowledge of regex's (regular expression pattern matching)!

DaleDe · 07-10-2011, 09:04 PM

Or start with HTML tidy. It can fix a lot of things.

martienne · 07-11-2011, 02:39 PM

Thanks for the advice so far!
I started a more specific thread about this in the Sigil section.

07-09-2011, 07:58 PM	#1
martienne .~^пиратка^~. Posts: 238 Karma: 14000 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Ask NSA... Device: Onyx Boox M92	Too big gaps between paragraphs, sentences split with break in between.... Some files off the internet have lost a lot of their formatting and are in a bad shape - for example paragraphs with several lines between them (instead of just one), sentences split in the middle with several empty lines between etc. Or for exampke a diamond shaped question mark replacing characters like apostrophes. What are some tricks to clean up files in such a bad shape?

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07-09-2011, 10:39 PM	#2
nrapallo GuteBook/Mobi2IMP Creator Posts: 2,958 Karma: 2530691 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Toronto, Canada Device: REB1200 EBW1150 Device: T1 NSTG iLiad_v2 NC Device: Asus_TF Next1 WPDN	Without any example files it's hard to say... You can try to cleanse the file by converting the empty lines using search and replace constructs and/or converting to html each paragraph block with <p> which inherently ignores whitespace. The strange characters you see in place of apostrophes is a character encoding problem i.e. UTF-8 vs ANSI vs dos text. I try to always work in html and try to avoid literal characters for extended dos characters and use their equivalent html codes i.e. © for © Your best tool would be a powerful text editor like textplus or notepad+ and some knowledge of regex's (regular expression pattern matching)!

07-10-2011, 09:04 PM	#3
DaleDe Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,470 Karma: 13095790 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Grass Valley, CA Device: EB 1150, EZ Reader, Literati, iPad 2 & Air 2, iPhone 7	Or start with HTML tidy. It can fix a lot of things.

07-11-2011, 02:39 PM	#4
martienne .~^пиратка^~. Posts: 238 Karma: 14000 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Ask NSA... Device: Onyx Boox M92	Thanks for the advice so far! I started a more specific thread about this in the Sigil section.

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