RTF to EPUB...extra line breaks

[jackie_w]

For anyone wanting to edit their RTFs in MSWord and having problems getting the EPUB line spacing retained, this is another approach which requires only MSWord and Calibre. MSWord to create/edit the RTF, Calibre to do a simple RTF to EPUB conversion. I don't claim it as 'the One True Way'.

I have attached 2 images. the first is how the sample RTF looks in Word, the second is how the EPUB looks in the Calibre Viewer. As you can see the line spacing appearance has been correctly retained. If the first image is what you're aiming for -- read on.

1. The main thing which needs to be done when editing the RTF in Word is NOT to add blank paragraphs where you want to see some vertcal whitespace. Instead you create a second Word paragraph-style (I've called it Para1, based on the Normal paragraph-style) which has a large top margin (using Format - paragraph - Space before) and a zero bottom margin (Format - paragraph - Space after=zero). I also set indents to zero for the Para1 style - but that's optional.
   
   Wherever you want to add extra vertical whitespace e.g. Chapter starts, scene breaks, you apply the Para1 style to the first paragraph. All other body text paragraphs can be left as Normal style. See image 1.
   
   
2. Make sure you have the following Convert - Look&Feel settings when you do the Calibre RTF to EPUB conversion:
   

   Remove spacing between paragraphs: unchecked
   Insert blank line: unchecked
   Extra CSS : p {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0}

   This gives you an EPUB which looks like image 2.

I've also attached the source sample RTF for anyone who wants to try it out. Hope it helps someone

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

For anyone wanting to edit their RTFs in MSWord and having problems getting the EPUB line spacing retained, this is another approach which requires only MSWord and Calibre. MSWord to create/edit the RTF, Calibre to do a simple RTF to EPUB conversion. I don't claim it as 'the One True Way'.
...

Hmm. Thanks. That seems like a lot of work unless you could devise it into a macro that substituted it in somehow. Seems like the best way to create new epubs though from RTF.

I'll try the conversion to ODT prior as a workaround. Didn't realize Calibre did ODT. Have to go install openoffice somewhere.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

Hmm. Thanks. That seems like a lot of work unless you could devise it into a macro that substituted it in somehow. Seems like the best way to create new epubs though from RTF.

I'll try the conversion to ODT prior as a workaround. Didn't realize Calibre did ODT. Have to go install openoffice somewhere.

Depending on your macro abilities, you certainly could macroise it as long as there's a way to recognise the 'right places', e.g. 2 or more consecutive end-of-paragraph markers.

However, on the whole I've found that saving the RTF as HTML webpage-filtered and importing the HTML to Calibre instead, is likely to retain more of the formating. It will certainly retain blank lines, which (at least on my ancient version of Word) gets saved as:

<p>&nbsp;</p>
or
<p class=MsoNormal>&nbsp;</p>

depending on whether my RTF body text uses the Normal(Web) style or the Normal style respectively. A Calibre conversion does not remove these HTML blank lines.

[ldolse]

Another option is to fix it after the fact in Sigil - I was digging into this more, and the blank line is actually preserved as an extra line feed in the converted document created by Calibre - so anywhere there was a soft break (using blank lines) the resultant file has 2 or more empty lines/line feeds.

So a regex like this:
(?<=\n)\n{2}

Replaced with this:
<p>&nbsp;</p>

Would re-insert the soft-breaks for epub.

I'm not really familiar enough with the rtf code to figure out where to fix it there, but this would also be easy enough to include in the optional preprocess code.

Edit - I was wrong about the extra line feeds being preserved - they aren't preserved unless a variable gets tweaked in the source code.

[MikeFromHC]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Depending on your macro abilities, you certainly could macroise it as long as there's a way to recognise the 'right places', e.g. 2 or more consecutive end-of-paragraph markers.

More than two paragraph markers are a problem but here is an old trick using just Word or any text editor withour regular expressions.
1. USE A COPY.
2. USE A COPY.
3. Search and replace all "^P^P" with an unused character. The pipe symbol is almost always safe. "|"
4. Search and replace all single "^P" with a space.
5. Search and replace all "|" with ^P or what ever you want to see.

This works well in any case where a single delimiter is used for one thing and two of them for something else as in converting multi line lists to a comma delimited flat file.

One and two above are the most important because if you do #4 before #3 you have a "bit" of work ahead.
Signed: Been there, done that.

[edbro]

Those have to be lowercase p's. ^p.

I do the same but instead of replacing ^p with a space I replace it with nothing.

[MikeFromHC]

Originally Posted by edbro

Those have to be lowercase p's. ^p.

I do the same but instead of replacing ^p with a space I replace it with nothing.

Replacing with nothing usually runs two words together.
This line^p
and this line

become "This lineand this line"

[edbro]

You're right, I don't know what I was thinking.

I have a macro that replaces ^p^p with ^p. Then it goes through and checks for incorrect line breaks. The macro searches for "^pa" and replaces with " a". Match case on. It does this for each letter in the alphabet.

[jackie_w]

@Mike,
I think we are at cross-purposes here. You appear to be detailing how to correctly reconstruct paragraphs from a file where every line has an end-of-paragraph. My original contribution was about trying to retain the extra whitespace between "scenes", in RTF to EPUB conversions, whilst removing extra whitespace between standard paragraphs, because RTF to EPUB currently removes blank lines.

Originally Posted by MikeFromHC

More than two paragraph markers are a problem...

By the way, this doesn't need to be a problem in MSWord, as long as you switch on the 'Wildcards' option in Find/Replace. Using your example Step 3, this should replace 2 or more end-of-paras with the pipe char:

Find: ^13{2,} (with the Wildcards box checked)
Replace: |

[ldolse]

FYI, this issue will be fixed in the next release of Calibre, extra line feeds in rtf files will be preserved as empty html paragraphs with a non-breaking space.

If your rtf file has garbage blank lines that you want to get rid of this can still be achieved by enabling the "remove spacing between paragraphs" option under Look & Feel.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by ldolse

FYI, this issue will be fixed in the next release of Calibre, extra line feeds in rtf files will be preserved as empty html paragraphs with a non-breaking space.

Thank you, Idolse, that should be much easier and faster for RTF fans.

[speakingtohe]

did you try changing the default line spacing in word or relpacing ^p^p with ^p (should do twice)
Helen

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by ldolse

FYI, this issue will be fixed in the next release of Calibre, extra line feeds in rtf files will be preserved as empty html paragraphs with a non-breaking space.

If your rtf file has garbage blank lines that you want to get rid of this can still be achieved by enabling the "remove spacing between paragraphs" option under Look & Feel.

Yay, good to hear. Thanks!!

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by ldolse

FYI, this issue will be fixed in the next release of Calibre, extra line feeds in rtf files will be preserved as empty html paragraphs with a non-breaking space.

If your rtf file has garbage blank lines that you want to get rid of this can still be achieved by enabling the "remove spacing between paragraphs" option under Look & Feel.

I dunno if anything has changed in the last mini update or two, but I'm still getting extra blank lines.

Every paragraph mark is still being turned into a blank line by default.

Any update? Should I enter a bug report when I get home? (Calibre site blocked at work)

[BookJunkieLI]

Uhm, if you don't want a blank line at the Paragraph mark have you tried turning it into a manual line break? Or a text wrapping break? 90% of my files were RTF before I uploaded them to Calibre for conversion. I quickly learned that I needed to check what kind of line break they had if I didn't want just a solid book length paragraph.
I just did a test file in which I used a Paragraph mark, a Manual Line break, a Text Wrapping break, and two Paragraph Marks. The Paragraph mark gave me an empty line between the two paragraphs. Both the Manual Line break and Text Wrapping Break gave me a new paragraph without an empty line between them and the Double Paragraph marks gave me two blank lines. The conversion settings were at the default settings, nothing special clicked, and I'm currently using Word 97 and Calibre 7.33. I hope this was of some help.

Beth