Sigil first line indents

[ebookscovers]

Hi there. i have an ebook complete and it looks great in Kindle previewer online and on Kindle previewer 3 for mac. However on the kindle mobile app the first line of each chapter is indented and after each text break. like I said looks fine elsewhere except first line indent issue on the kindle app. there is 92 chapters so any quick fix?
here's a sample below: (Ebook was created in Quarkxpress 2021 and cleaned up in Sigil)

<div class="page" id="section6"><div id="box1"><p id="box1_0" class="para-Normal-Local-18"><span class="char-Normal-Local-24">1</span><span class="char-Normal-Local-18"><br/></span></p>
<p id="box1_2" class="para-Normal-Local-5"><span class="char-Normal-Local-18"><br/></span></p>
<p id="box1_3" class="para-Normal-Local-5"><span class="char-Normal-Local-18">(DON'T WANT INDENT HERE!!)The panic attack started in the shower. Jo was combing conditioner through her
hair when the dread crept up and dealt a buckling punch to her gut. She crashed
out of the bathroom and collapsed on the landing. She lay there, naked,
shaking, fighting a body hellbent on extinguishing itself. Her lungs had the
capacity of squeezed teabags, her limbs were being incinerated from within, her
heart seemed intent on cracking open her sternum.<br/></span></p>

[Turtle91]

This doesn’t really have anything to do with Sigil, but…

I would look in the style definition for:
para-Normal-Local-5
And
char-Normal-Local-18

To see if it has a text-indent in there.

I would also get rid of the <br/> before the </p> at the end of the paragraph. Not needed and it is probably unwanted for the majority of readers.

[Notjohn]

Named styles are ever so much easier to handle. This is my style for the "first" paragraph in a chapter or section:

p.first {
margin-top:0.5em;
margin-bottom: 0.0em;
text-indent:0.0em;
text-align:justify;
}

It's evoked of course by going <p class="first">

My style sheet can be seen at notjohnkdp.blogspot.com (posted in 2013 but often updated).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Named styles are ever so much easier to handle. This is my style for the "first" paragraph in a chapter or section:

p.first {
margin-top:0.5em;
margin-bottom: 0.0em;
text-indent:0.0em;
text-align:justify;
}

It's evoked of course by going <p class="first">

My style sheet can be seen at notjohnkdp.blogspot.com (posted in 2013 but often updated).

I find that it's neater to put all the spacing in the chapter header style or h1/h2.

h2 [
  font-weight: bold;
  text-align: center;
  text-indent: 0;
  margin-top: 1em;
  margin-bottom: 1em;
}
.noindent {
  text-indent: 0;
}

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ebookscovers

Hi there. i have an ebook complete and it looks great in Kindle previewer online and on Kindle previewer 3 for mac. However on the kindle mobile app the first line of each chapter is indented and after each text break. like I said looks fine elsewhere except first line indent issue on the kindle app. there is 92 chapters so any quick fix?
here's a sample below: (Ebook was created in Quarkxpress 2021 and cleaned up in Sigil)

<div class="page" id="section6"><div id="box1"><p id="box1_0" class="para-Normal-Local-18"><span class="char-Normal-Local-24">1</span><span class="char-Normal-Local-18"><br/></span></p>
<p id="box1_2" class="para-Normal-Local-5"><span class="char-Normal-Local-18"><br/></span></p>
<p id="box1_3" class="para-Normal-Local-5"><span class="char-Normal-Local-18">(DON'T WANT INDENT HERE!!)The panic attack started in the shower. Jo was combing conditioner through her
hair when the dread crept up and dealt a buckling punch to her gut. She crashed
out of the bathroom and collapsed on the landing. She lay there, naked,
shaking, fighting a body hellbent on extinguishing itself. Her lungs had the
capacity of squeezed teabags, her limbs were being incinerated from within, her
heart seemed intent on cracking open her sternum.<br/></span></p>

@ebookscovers, you should do some code cleaning. The code could be neater. There is too much unnecessary code for the chapter header. HTML/CSS can be this simple. Arr you using styles with Quark? If not, you should start a fresh document with Quark and a sample with styles and see how the code comes out. If you are using styles, then I suggest cleaning up the code by hand. Also, change the style names so you'll better understand what they do when you see the class names.

body {
  widows: 1;
  orphans: 1;
  margin-top: 0;
  margin-right: 0;
  margin-bottom: 0;
  margin-left: 0;
  text-align: justify;
}
h2 [
  font-weight: bold;
  text-align: center;
  text-indent: 0;
  margin-top: 1em;
  margin-bottom: 1em;
}
p {
  margin-top: 0;
  margin-bottom: 0;
  text-indent: 1.2em;
}
.noindent {
  text-indent: 0;
}

<h2>1</h2>
<p class="noindent">The panic attack started in the shower. Jo was combing conditioner through her  hair when the dread crept up and dealt a buckling punch to her gut. She crashed  out of the bathroom and collapsed on the landing. She lay there, naked,  shaking, fighting a body hellbent on extinguishing itself. Her lungs had the capacity of squeezed teabags, her limbs were being incinerated from within, her heart seemed intent on cracking open her sternum.</p>

[Turtle91]

Jon, can you please just add something to the thread - anything that furthers answering the OPs question…

Try not to put your opinions out there as some kind of requirement.

There was nothing wrong with Notjohn’s post. It IS good to have styles with names you can easily understand: like “first” for the first paragraph…. And an example of how he style’s it… and how to call it… all good.

Just because I don’t like using justify doesn’t make it wrong. Similarly, it isn’t required to put 0.0em - its extra precise when a simple 0 can be used (no units needed for zero, since it’s still zero in any unit) - but it isn’t “wrong”. When you say it is wrong you are just injecting confusion to a conversation where the OP is obviously seeking help with the basics.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Jon, can you please just add something to the thread - anything that furthers answering the OPs question…

Try not to put your opinions out there as some kind of requirement.

There was nothing wrong with Notjohn’s post. It IS good to have styles with names you can easily understand: like “first” for the first paragraph…. And an example of how he style’s it… and how to call it… all good.

Just because I don’t like using justify doesn’t make it wrong. Similarly, it isn’t required to put 0.0em - its extra precise when a simple 0 can be used (no units needed for zero, since it’s still zero in any unit) - but it isn’t “wrong”. When you say it is wrong you are just injecting confusion to a conversation where the OP is obviously seeking help with the basics.

The space between the chapter header and the first line is best done in the CSS for the chapter header. It makes the noindent CSS class that much easier to use for other places if wanted and it's one less CSS class that's needed. I'm trying to make the code as simple as possible.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The space between the chapter header and the first line should be done in the CSS for the chapter header. It makes the noindent CSS class that much easier and it's one less CSS class that's needed. I'm trying to make the code as simple as possible.

But that wasn't the OP's question...

Even though I agree with you (mostly) about the spacing for the header being in the CSS. You don't have to push your own preferences - which you were doing by telling Notjohn he was wrong and providing your own techniques (which, OBTW, are not all good either). Just because you don't like how someone else does it, doesn't make it wrong. Saying it's "wrong" on a thread where someone is asking for help on indents on the first line of each chapter, when it's just not the way you do it, just confuses people. That's not being helpful. If an experienced OP came on here and said: "I'm having a problem with implementing yadda, yadda, yadda. Does anyone have alternate techniques I can try?" then you could go all out with your different techniques... But when they are asking "what letter comes after 'B' in the English language" going off on a tangent telling them how you can draw a cuneiform 'C' that's rotated 17 degrees, dropcapped, and 1.23456 times the normal height of the letters 'h' and "p" does NOT help the OP.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

But that wasn't the OP's question...

Even though I agree with you (mostly) about the spacing for the header being in the CSS...

I did go back and edit my posts to tone down some of the language. But as to the OP's question, the code I posted does answer the question about the indents that are not wanted.