Not correctly detecting chapter spacing

[julid]

Hi, everyone. First off let me say, I just *love* your site. I've been lurking around for a while, and always find what I'm looking for. You all have helped me through two ereaders, with which I might've lost my sanity or given up on ebooks long ago, but for your site, and I appreciate it. Really. Y'all are awesome.

Ahem, I have never had the bravery to jump in here and say hi, however. So I am saying it now, and with a question. I downloaded Calibre in preparation for formatting a forthcoming book...I downloaded it about a week--maybe two--ago. And it's updated three or four times since then *sigh* (I have vers. 0.8.6 now, started with 0.8.57--I think.) But I notice that while everything else works just fine, and I'm finding it rather fun to work with, I notice my chapter breaks aren't being detected correctly.

(They look like, this-- on Sony PRS-300 and this on Kindle

This is better than before. Before, it was starting the next chapter a few spaces down from the end of a previous--no page break. But now there's this huge break, as you can see, which doesn't set right to my eye either. I'd like it to begin about 1/3 down the page, like my document does.

I've tried different things: I hit the P button and removed all the extraneous formatting. I have bolded the chapter headings, I didn't bold them, I have exploded the files and fixed the html, I have read every thread on the board I could find and tried the tips (such as the one suggested here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=101467 )

I can't think of how else to get the spacing the way I want it.

I suppose I shouldn't worry about it, but it looks, wrong somehow. Can y'all point me to a solution please? to get it to replicate the chapter spacing direct from Word? I feel like there's some easier solution I'm overlooking... It's driving me nuts! *

[ldolse]

Hi, Welcome to mobileread. It's actually a bit difficult to determine from your description what potential solutions may be, as we really need you to tell us all the steps you went through to get from 'xyz' document (and we need to know what xyz was), to a usable ebook. Your conversion settings would help a lot.

Anyway it looks like your book has some sort of css which is creating huge margins at the top of chapter headings. What you need to do is figure out what the embedded css is that's doing this and over-riding it.

If this is indeed a book you're writing/formatting on your own, your best bet might be to use Sigil (an ePub authoring tool also supported on Mobileread) as your primary formatting tool, and once you have the ePub looking the way you want then convert that to mobi using Calibre.

[julid]

Originally Posted by ldolse

Hi, Welcome to mobileread. It's actually a bit difficult to determine from your description what potential solutions may be, as we really need you to tell us all the steps you went through to get from 'xyz' document (and we need to know what xyz was), to a usable ebook. Your conversion settings would help a lot.

Okay. Let me see here....I hope I'm explaining this right. The steps I take are as follows: I save the book as a word doc. Then to the web format. Then opened Calibre and added the book via the Add Books button. Hit the Edit Metadata button and put in my name and cover and so forth and converted from the source file (which Calibre calls a zip for some reason--so from Zip to Mobi for the Kindle (or zip to epub for the Sony). Then I fix the Look and feel, looked at Heuretic processing. Haven't a clue what to do with it, so leave it alone. Go to page set up. Input and Output set to Kindle (or epub depending on the device). Structure Detection: all I changed there was to choose page break as the chapter mark and "Remove Fake Margins" is checked. Table of Contents all I change there is the number of the chapters. Search and Replace and Mobi Output/Epub Output sections I left alone on their default. Then I go back to the main screen and output the book to the Device.

Originally Posted by ldolse

Anyway it looks like your book has some sort of css which is creating huge margins at the top of chapter headings. What you need to do is figure out what the embedded css is that's doing this and over-riding it.

Right. I see, when I look at the html 35 lines of this between the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two: *I'm removing some of the brackets so you can see the code* !--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->*</span></span></b</p

p class="MsoNormal"><b class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2"><span class="calibre3"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->*</span></span></b></p>

p class="MsoNormal">

etc. Now I suppose that's it trying to replicate the carriage returns? But I doubt it's 35 lines worth. Why is it doing that? That's what I can't understand. I could manually go through and cut the offending extra lines of code no problem. It's just time consuming and I've noticed the size of the blocks of this code vary from chapter to chapter. Odd that, since the chapter openings are about the same, 1/3 down the page in Word. So I'd like to nix the problem in the original html source if I can before it gets onto the ereader in the first place. I'm sorry if I'm making this a little more complicated than it needs to be.

Originally Posted by ldolse

If this is indeed a book you're writing/formatting on your own,

Yes. It is.

Originally Posted by ldolse

your best bet might be to use Sigil (an ePub authoring tool also supported on Mobileread) as your primary formatting tool, and once you have the ePub looking the way you want then convert that to mobi using Calibre.

Sigil, huh? Okay, I shall give that program a try. Again, I truly appreciate your help. Thanks so very much!

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by julid

Okay. Let me see here....I hope I'm explaining this right. The steps I take are as follows: I save the book as a word doc. Then to the web format.

Do you save it to Web Page filtered as recommended?

[ldolse]

Originally Posted by julid

Right. I see, when I look at the html 35 lines of this between the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two: *I'm removing some of the brackets so you can see the code* !--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->*</span></span></b</p

p class="MsoNormal"><b class="calibre1"><span class="calibre2"><span class="calibre3"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->*</span></span></b></p>

p class="MsoNormal">

etc. Now I suppose that's it trying to replicate the carriage returns? But I doubt it's 35 lines worth. Why is it doing that? That's what I can't understand. I could manually go through and cut the offending extra lines of code no problem. It's just time consuming and I've noticed the size of the blocks of this code vary from chapter to chapter. Odd that, since the chapter openings are about the same, 1/3 down the page in Word. So I'd like to nix the problem in the original html source if I can before it gets onto the ereader in the first place. I'm sorry if I'm making this a little more complicated than it needs to be.

It sounds like Microsoft Word is your problem - it's creating the empty lines and Calibre is just converting them for you. I'm not certain you're using Word in the right way though. You shouldn't put 'any' manual line feeds between your chapter endings/beginnings. You should instead use Word's built in heading/layout tools. Insert a pagebreak if you want a page break by using the insert page break function, and assign a heading style to the chapter heading that adds suitable space to the top margins for you - it may very well be that Word's default heading styles aren't to your liking, but you can change those styles, google around for instructions based on your version of Word.

[BetterRed]

julid,

If your original 'text' is simple (i.e your not using things like columns or flowing text around images etc) then the following might work as effectively for you as it does for me.

Rather than using Word's Save as Web Page, save the document in Word as an RTF (rich text format) file. Add the RTF to Calibre and convert the RTF to epub & mobi.

You can edit the RTF file in Word much as you would a regular Word document file, providing you stay away from Word's advanced features. I do most of my work on RTF files now

RTF files are typically twice as big as Word 1997/2003 DOC files, which in turn are twice as big as Word 2007/2010 DOCX files. So, once a work is finished you might want to save the original in the native format (DOC or DOCX) to save space - personally I don't bother.

The simplest way to insert a page break in Word is CTRL/Enter

The only place you should have paragraph marks (hard returns) are at the end of paragraphs.

If you use Word's Paragraph Formatting features for things like indents, space before/after, Widow/Orphan control etc and save as RTF then you should get very faithful conversions.

BR

[julid]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Do you save it to Web Page filtered as recommended?

Hi ...Unfortunately I don't have an option to save as Web Page filtered. Just one computer has "save as Webpage" and one has "save as html document". I'm going to guess that's a feature of Vista or Windows 7 which I don't have?

[julid]

Originally Posted by ldolse

It sounds like Microsoft Word is your problem - it's creating the empty lines and Calibre is just converting them for you. I'm not certain you're using Word in the right way though. You shouldn't put 'any' manual line feeds between your chapter endings/beginnings. You should instead use Word's built in heading/layout tools.

Okay.... I think you lost me...

Originally Posted by ldolse

Insert a pagebreak if you want a page break by using the insert page break function, and assign a heading style to the chapter heading that adds suitable space to the top margins for you

Page break, huh? Okay. Usually when I start a new chapter, I do what my writing groups say and "return" to about 1/3 of the page down and start the new chapter.

Originally Posted by ldolse

- it may very well be that Word's default heading styles aren't to your liking,

I don't know whether I like them or not. I just use the view header/footer and insert my page numbers. I've erased whatever I'd put in the headers to send out to critique partners for their benefit. I'm now erasing because I read somewhere they're unnecessary.

Originally Posted by ldolse

but you can change those styles, google around for instructions based on your version of Word.

okay. Thanks.

[julid]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

julid,

If your original 'text' is simple (i.e your not using things like columns or flowing text around images etc) then the following might work as effectively for you as it does for me.

Rather than using Word's Save as Web Page, save the document in Word as an RTF (rich text format) file. Add the RTF to Calibre and convert the RTF to epub & mobi.[/b]

Normally I write in RTF, so I'll give it a shot with the original file.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

The simplest way to insert a page break in Word is CTRL/Enter

*palm face* So easy! I'll have to remember that.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

The only place you should have paragraph marks (hard returns) are at the end of paragraphs. If you use Word's Paragraph Formatting features for things like indents, space before/after, Widow/Orphan control

hate Widow/Orphan. I wish I could find a way to permanently turn it off.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

etc and save as RTF then you should get very faithful conversions.

I'll try the RTF version, BR. Thank you! Meanwhile, I plan to noodle with Sigil, just to see.

[ldolse]

Originally Posted by julid

Page break, huh? Okay. Usually when I start a new chapter, I do what my writing groups say and "return" to about 1/3 of the page down and start the new chapter.

All those returns are what's causing the problem. Don't use any returns whatsoever, just the page break.

Originally Posted by julid

I don't know whether I like them or not. I just use the view header/footer and insert my page numbers. I've erased whatever I'd put in the headers to send out to critique partners for their benefit. I'm now erasing because I read somewhere they're unnecessary.

I was referring to the style of the chapter heading, not headers/footers:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/wo...010230882.aspx

Choose or modify a Microsoft style that gives you a 1/3 page of blank space.

[julid]

Originally Posted by ldolse

All those returns are what's causing the problem. Don't use any returns whatsoever, just the page break.


I was referring to the style of the chapter heading, not headers/footers:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/wo...010230882.aspx

Choose or modify a Microsoft style that gives you a 1/3 page of blank space.

Oh, I see. I'll poke around it and see what I can come up with. Thanks again.

[julid]

The other thing I seem to be running into: I've downloaded the latest version of Calibre (this morning) and even still, it doesn't seem that the creator has adjusted the program to accommodate "K8". K8 is the newest hottest thing, right? I'm assuming it's Kindle Fire? I only have the $99 kindle so the mobi files seem to work for me...so how do we work around this? Just curious.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by julid

The other thing I seem to be running into: I've downloaded the latest version of Calibre (this morning) and even still, it doesn't seem that the creator has adjusted the program to accommodate "K8". K8 is the newest hottest thing, right? I'm assuming it's Kindle Fire? I only have the $99 kindle so the mobi files seem to work for me...so how do we work around this? Just curious.

Yes, Calibre does handle AZW3 (KF8) files. The Kindle Blah and the Kindle Touch both support KF8 although it doesn't look nice on firmware 4.1 & 5.1 due to the line-height bugs.