Tabs not saving. Losing all format.

[tboy2000]

I am a casual user. I don't know html coding. I am using sigil to edit an epub. When I press Shift + Enter then tab between two sentences to indent the next line, i find they are not saving. even if i save the file or go back and forth between html pages, my tab indents are all gone and not saving. What am i not understanding please?

[KevinH]

In html, a tab is just another single whitespace char. To use Sigil you really must know basic html and css. A skill worth knowing.

[tboy2000]

Ah ok. I thought I could get away without knowing HTML code as the Sigil UI gives me a WYSIWYG impression.

Does that mean I need to manually add an HTML indent code everytime I need it? Seems quite a long winded process for the 300 page epub I am fixing.

Want to upload to my Google Play Books library.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by tboy2000

Ah ok. I thought I could get away without knowing HTML code as the Sigil UI gives me a WYSIWYG impression.

Does that mean I need to manually add an HTML indent code everytime I need it? Seems quite a long winded process for the 300 page epub I am fixing.

Want to upload to my Google Play Books library.

That is what CSS is for. You have a separate style for .indented (your choice of name)

.indented {text-indent: 1.2em;}
usage

<p class="indented"> blah de blah </p>

[hobnail]

Alternatively to what theducks said, if you want all paragraphs indented, in your stylesheet.css file you could use

p { text-indent: 1.2em; }

Then it's just

<p>blah blah blah</p>

If you wanted a paragraph not indented, e.g., after a chapter title, you could use

p { text-indent: 1.2em; }
.noindent { text-indent: 0em; }

And the html is

<h2>Chapter title</h2>
<p class="noindent">blah blah blah</p>
<p>blah blah blah</p>

In the stylesheet.css the thing with a dot is specifying a class and without a dot it's specifying an html tag.

[tboy2000]

Forgive me friends but in code view i see this line:

<span style="font-size: 1em;">The sky can be very pretty when it's moody which is the one good thing about a storm.

I want a tab indent of say 6 white spaces before the word The. What code do i need to add to the above line? Please bear with me and my novice knowledge of this type of coding.

I know some examples are in the above replies but still not sure how to merge with existing code before the word.

[phillipgessert]

Originally Posted by tboy2000

Forgive me friends but in code view i see this line:

<span style="font-size: 1em;">The sky can be very pretty when it's moody which is the one good thing about a storm.

I want a tab indent of say 6 white spaces before the word The. What code do i need to add to the above line? Please bear with me and my novice knowledge of this type of coding.

I know some examples are in the above replies but still not sure how to merge with existing code before the word.

What comes before that <span>? A <p>?

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by tboy2000

Forgive me friends but in code view i see this line:

<span style="font-size: 1em;">The sky can be very pretty when it's moody which is the one good thing about a storm.

I want a tab indent of say 6 white spaces before the word The. What code do i need to add to the above line? Please bear with me and my novice knowledge of this type of coding.

I know some examples are in the above replies but still not sure how to merge with existing code before the word.

Every paragraph should begin with a <p> and end with a </p>. Blank lines around (above and/or below) paragraphs don't do anything. Nor do blank lines within paragraphs wrapped in <p> and </p>.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/...eb/HTML_basics

(The web and ebooks both use html.)

[theducks]

CSS for ebook should deal in relative dimensions. NEVER cm or in

1.2em means 1.2 * the width of an M in the current font (face and size)

6em is huge. (for normal paragraphs, I use 1.2 - 2em as an indent)
If you want a List, the use <UL> <--unordered list
and <LI> for each item
Note ALL tags get closed
</li>
And finally </ul> to end list mode

Find some books close to the type you are doing in the MR Library, and look at how the are coded

[tboy2000]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

What comes before that <span>? A <p>?

Correct.

[phillipgessert]

Any class or style attributes? Or does it literally just look like “<p>”. Any files in the “Styles” folder in the sidebar, or anything mentioning style in the <head> at the beginning of that HTML document?

[tboy2000]

Ok I have solved the issue. I just add:

& # 160 ; & # 160 ; & # 160 ; (no spaces)

directly before the word i want indented.


Thank you everyone for your advice and patience with a new user. And no snarky replies too! Friendly!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by tboy2000

Correct.

You can't 'indent' a span, only on block level tags (p, div,h )
Think of span, b, i as temporary modification of the current BLOCK.
Make this bigger. make this italic, make this bold

[PeterT]

You might want to take a look at some very basic tutorials. One that might help is by Pablo. See https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EPub_Tutorial

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by tboy2000

Ok I have solved the issue. I just add:

& # 160 ; & # 160 ; & # 160 ; (no spaces)


... And no snarky replies too! Friendly!

Sorry, but I can't resist. Friendly advice: using spaces like that is the true sign of gaucherie.