Nobreakespace or no nobreakespace?

[GraciousMe]

While editing a book in Sigil I am reading Pablo´s excellent Quick and Dirty ePub Tutorial. Thank you, Pablo!

He talks about the hazards of editing in Book View and the hideous results it can create.

But is this

<p>&nbsp; </p>

really never to used?

Should all empty paragraphs be created in other ways (CSS?)?

And what about temporary bold, italic and underlined text? Surely they need no CSS?

[Toxaris]

I use it for empty lines....

Bold, italic and the like I usually do via a stylesheet.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by GraciousMe

While editing a book in Sigil I am reading Pablo´s excellent Quick and Dirty ePub Tutorial. Thank you, Pablo!

He talks about the hazards of editing in Book View and the hideous results it can create.

But is this

<p>&nbsp; </p>

really never to used?

Should all empty paragraphs be created in other ways (CSS?)?

And what about temporary bold, italic and underlined text? Surely they need no CSS?

IMHO Everything that can, should be done with a stylesheet entry. This make a One Stop place to change your mind and fine tune.

Set a FirstParagraph or additional style if needed to increase paragraph spacing with a larger margin-top:

or create a scenebreak style (very useful to control character based breaks)

The pseudo empty paragraph you show above prevents some render engines from ignoring extra whitespace

I keep seeing a reoccurring theme in your posts: 1990's lean (low bandwidth, extra-low processing, miniscule RAM) HTML coding

A fairly rich looking EPUB novel with cover is under a Meg (fits on a floppy ). There is no need to strip a book that bare

[Serpentine]

Originally Posted by GraciousMe

Should all empty paragraphs be created in other ways (CSS?)?

I perfer the CSS method personally. I just create an extra class which adds a fair bottom margin. Then just append that to the pre-break paragraph. It also makes it possible to make the changes via regex - find a p tag followed by a filler div/p (i.e. filled with nbsp/\s/\t etc). Replace with the first paragraph with the class appended (a bit tricky, but I'm sure I have examples somewhere).

Originally Posted by GraciousMe

And what about temporary bold, italic and underlined text? Surely they need no CSS?

I prefer using the basic tags, i/b/u too—however, the u tag however is not part of the spec(or xhtml), and you will generate errors in regards to this. However since it's so sparsely used in novels, and most of the time it will be used for headings and such, appending it to an existing style is often easier and cleaner anyway.

[Jellby]

The thing is that there are no "empty paragraphs". What you see usually in books as scene breaks is simply some blank space, not an empty pagraph (would you count the empty spaces as paragraphs if someone told you to look at the 25th paragraph in a chapter?).

So, if it's a blank space and not an empty paragraph, why code it as an empty paragraph and not as blank space? (Yes, I know the answer: because it's easier to hit return twice.) Now, for creating blank space there are several possibilities: margin or padding above the next paragraph, margin or padding below the previous paragraph, an empty image, a fixed-height <div>... any of which are better than just "<p>&nbsp;</p>"

If you insist, then please add some styling: <p class="break">&nbsp;</p>, that way, at least, you could change the amount of blank space easily.

[GraciousMe]

Thanks folks. Maybe I am overdoing this. Too much Taoism and Twiggy maybe.

CSS is a very new thing to me. I will get used to it.

[mrmikel]

Some of the differences of opinion stem from how much work you want to put in on it and whether you like editing in HTML. Being able to and liking are far from the same.

Some want to create a book that will stand as a testimonial for all time as to how an e book should look. Others, like me, who often work from OCRed sources, are just glad to produce something reasonably attractive and useable after fighting with 1,000,000 OCR errors, then finding a better copy to extract all the pictures from then reinserting them.

So long as it works and does not cause ereaders to scream is fine by me. But I have no intention of posting to Apple or other ebook sellers who are finicky (some beyond reason) as to what they will accept.

[Jellby]

It often happens that a bit of extra work in the first stages can save you a lot of work and headaches in later ones. You may do without the initial extra work if you never reach the later stages... but can you be sure that you (or anyone else) never ever will?

Of course, there's no law against an "it works fine" ebook, but the result will be more valuable for the future if it's a little more than that.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by GraciousMe

Thanks folks. Maybe I am overdoing this. Too much Taoism and Twiggy maybe.

CSS is a very new thing to me. I will get used to it.

See it as the difference between structure and layout. In the XHTML file you define all components and with the stylesheet you define the layout. If you follow that simple rule, it will make more sense.
It will make life a lot simpler, since you have one single place to define your layout for the complete book. That is, as long as your structure is solid.