Copied and pasted   ended up with & #160;

[Gregg Bell]

(I left that space in & #160; intentionally otherwise MR turned it into *)

For my asterisk spacing I use:

<p class="asterisks">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;* &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</p>

So I copied that and pasted it into a new book. But after implementing "Mend and prettify all HTML files" I got this: (actually several & #160#; things and my three asterisks)

<p class="asterisks">*************</p>

I know they're the same thing but Sigil never changed the &nbsp; before. Is this normal? So then if there is a lone &nbsp; in the book somewhere I really should look for & #160; right?

[Turtle91]

ePub3 doesn't allow named entities like &nbsp; - it only accepts numbered entities (one of the dumber things I think the ODPF changed).

If you have Sigil set to ePub3 by default, it will automatically change the &nbsp; to & #160;

I honestly don't remember if Sigil does it for ePub2 automatically?? In any case you can go into Sigil Preferences/Preserve Entities and add & #160;

[Turtle91]

As for the asterisks...I wouldn't put a lot of extra spaces between the characters...just set your css with your desired letter spacing:

eg
.asterisks {letter-spacing:2em}
<p class="asterisks">***</p>

[DiapDealer]

If you put &nbsp; in your Preserve Entities list (in Preferences) and you're working on an epub2, they won't be converted. If you're working on an epub3, then &nbsp; shouldn't be in your Preserve Entities list. As Turtle91 noted: named entities are not valid in Epub3.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

As for the asterisks...I wouldn't put a lot of extra spaces between the characters...just set your css with your desired letter spacing:

eg
.asterisks {letter-spacing:2em}
<p class="asterisks">***</p>

Thanks Dion. I'll try it.

Originally Posted by Turtle91

ePub3 doesn't allow named entities like &nbsp; - it only accepts numbered entities (one of the dumber things I think the ODPF changed).

If you have Sigil set to ePub3 by default, it will automatically change the &nbsp; to & #160;

I honestly don't remember if Sigil does it for ePub2 automatically?? In any case you can go into Sigil Preferences/Preserve Entities and add & #160;

Mine was set to Epub Version 2. And I don't know how it got in there but the & #160 entitiy was in the Preserve Entities. I got rid of it and added the & nbsp entity (that's what you meant, right?).

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

If you put &nbsp; in your Preserve Entities list (in Preferences) and you're working on an epub2, they won't be converted. If you're working on an epub3, then &nbsp; shouldn't be in your Preserve Entities list. As Turtle91 noted: named entities are not valid in Epub3.

Thanks Diap. Yeah, working on an epub2. Like I said, that & #160; entity was in the Preserve Entities (it was the only thing there). It must've come with the default because I didn't even know there was a Preserve Entities section. Anyway, I got rid of the evil & #160; and restored good old & nbsp;. The crops are saved.

[DiapDealer]

It DOES come as the default entry. Basically because it will work without issue in either epub2 or epub3. If you plan on working mostly with epub2, and you prefer the named entity, then the advice is to change it as you did.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

I know they're the same thing but Sigil never changed the &nbsp; before. Is this normal? So then if there is a lone &nbsp; in the book somewhere I really should look for & #160; right?

In 2019, I reported the same bug in the "Sigil 0.9.15" thread:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...64#post3865864

Nobody could find any rhyme or reason it happened either.

... Definitely a headscratcher though... (it hasn't happened to me since).

Diap recommended the same thing here: To readd the &nbsp; or &#160; as needed.

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

(I left that space in & #160; intentionally otherwise MR turned it into *)

The forums auto-convert nbsp and #160 into space.

If you want to force it to display, you can shove a [ noparse][/noparse] around the ampersand. (Remove the space before " noparse".)

So you type this:

[ noparse]&[/noparse]nbsp;
[ noparse]&[/noparse]#160;

and the forums will display like this:

&nbsp;
&#160;

[DNSB]

One minor nit. There are 5 named entities allowed in epub3, & amp;, & lt;, & gt;, & apos; and & quot;.

I also ran into one epub3 where the author decided to add a mass of entities using:

<!DOCTYPE html [
   <!ENTITY nbsp "& #160;"> 
   <!ENTITY Aacute "& #193;"> 
   <!ENTITY bull  "& #8226;">
   <!ENTITY ldquo "& #8220;">
   <!ENTITY rdquo "& #8221;">
   <!ENTITY pound "& #163;"> 
   <!ENTITY iquest "& #191;"> 
....  for about 20 more entries.
]>

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by DNSB

One minor nit. There are 5 named entities allowed in epub3, & amp;, & lt;, & gt;, & apos; and & quot;.

Yep. That's a given. They're always allowed. The first three of those should also never be added to Sigil's Preserve Entities list. Not unless you want all your opening and closing tags to be converted to entities and all ampersands in those entities to start breeding out of control.

[Gregg Bell]

If it helps, this bug happened when I upgraded from Sigil 1.1.0 to 1.2.0.

[KevinH]

It is not a bug. It is expected behaviour. The default is now set to work properly with both epub2 and epub3. You must change the Sigil's Preserve Entities Preferences to set it if you prefer named entities in epub2.

You can even remove it completely and the nbsp char will show up in CodeView's syntax highlighter so you can detect it even without the entity set.

[DiapDealer]

Yes. I missed the part about a few thinking it was a "bug." It's definitely working as it was intended. The numeric non-breaking space entity is compatible with both epub2 and epub3. So that's the default for new Sigil installs. If you primarily work with epub2 and prefer the named non-breaking space entity, change it in the Preserve Entities preference list as described above.

[DiapDealer]

Also ... for anyone who might be wondering why their existing Sigil installation might have changed from &nbsp; to &#160; after a Sigil upgrade, it's probably because you never modified your Preserve Entities list in your preferences. The single default entry (the no-break space entity--whether named or numeric) is not saved to the Sigil.ini file if the list is never altered by the user. Only when you add/remove entities does the list get flushed to disk. Once that happens, no Sigil update will alter it (whether Sigil's defaults change or not). Until then, the single default entry that's hard-coded in Sigil rules the day.

[Gregg Bell]

Ok. Thanks for the explanations, guys.