Tabs not saving. Losing all format.

[tboy2000]

Originally Posted by hobnail

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

I had to use spaces. When I pasted the code without spaces it was censored with ***** for some reason.

Try it!

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by tboy2000

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

You definitely want to replace that span with the following:

<p>The sky can be very pretty when it's moody which is the one good thing about a storm.</p>

and in your attached css stylesheet:

p {text-indent:1.2em}

I highly recommend saving yourself many hours worth of and NOT putting those [PRE]&160;[/PRE]

[tboy2000]

That code was already in the epub when I used an online pdf to epub convertor. I guess the online service did it. Cheers!

[Turtle91]

Yes, online/automated converters often put some ugly coding when converting… especially if you are using a pdf as your source doc.
You can easily replace those spans in Sigil using the tag-mechanic plug-in. Also, if your paragraphs all have a basic <p> tag then all you need to do for your spacing is add the
p {text-indent: 1.2em}
to your attached style sheet.
If it is not a basic paragraph tag and has something like
<p class="calibre2">
Then you can do a simple find/replace to fix it:

Find: <p class="calibre2">
Replace: <p>

Should take about 30 seconds to do all that in Sigil.

[Notjohn]

<p> is your basic paragraph style. Mine is this:


p {
margin-top:0.0em;
margin-bottom:0.0em;
text-indent:1.5em;
text-align:justify;
}

You don't need to add a "class" unless you're doing something different, as in <p class="first"> which for me is this:

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

My entire style sheet is at https://notjohnkdp.blogspot.com/ which you are welcome to borrow or adapt.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

<p> is your basic paragraph style. Mine is this:


p {
margin-top:0.0em;
margin-bottom:0.0em;
text-indent:1.5em;
text-align:justify;
}

You don't need to add a "class" unless you're doing something different, as in <p class="first"> which for me is this:

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

My entire style sheet is at https://notjohnkdp.blogspot.com/ which you are welcome to borrow or adapt.

Drop the justify. Put it in body only.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by tboy2000

That code was already in the epub when I used an online pdf to epub convertor. I guess the online service did it. Cheers!

and not to put too fine a point on it, but Sigil is not a word processor. You should not be typing a manuscript in it.

IF you had used Word, or Pages, Open Office, Libre Office, etc and used STYLES and HEADINGS, your paragraph style would already exist and already have the desired indent. I take it that you didn't do that?

Using spaces is, flatly, not going to work. It's not merely gaucherie, as observed by Hob--it's not going to work. There are intake mechanisms, at various retailers, that would strip those right the hell out.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

and not to put too fine a point on it, but Sigil is not a word processor. You should not be typing a manuscript in it.

IF you had used Word, or Pages, Open Office, Libre Office, etc and used STYLES and HEADINGS, your paragraph style would already exist and already have the desired indent. I take it that you didn't do that?

Using spaces is, flatly, not going to work. It's not merely gaucherie, as observed by Hob--it's not going to work. There are intake mechanisms, at various retailers, that would strip those right the hell out.

Hitch

Not only that, but most reading software ignore multiple spaces and convert them into just one space.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Not only that, but most reading software ignore multiple spaces and convert them into just one space.

There's no reading software that I know that will compress non-breaking space characters or entities. They're not the type of whitespace that tends to get compressed. It's still a bad idea to use non-breaking spaces to achieve paragraph indentation, but there's little worry that they will get compressed. More like they'll just get stripped out upstream someplace like Hitch mentioned.

And having said all that... it's time to remind everyone that there is nothing in this conversation that's Sigil specific. This is all html/css/epub-centric.

[Turtle91]

But, but, but I mentioned the totally awesome Sigil plug-in Tag Mechanic…

[tboy2000]

Originally Posted by Hitch

and not to put too fine a point on it, but Sigil is not a word processor. You should not be typing a manuscript in it.

IF you had used Word, or Pages, Open Office, Libre Office, etc and used STYLES and HEADINGS, your paragraph style would already exist and already have the desired indent. I take it that you didn't do that?

Hitch

No I didn't. I wrote it all out in Word but did not use CSS. Then I pasted my story into Affinity Publisher and did my layout and exported to PDF. Managed to print my books fine with Lulu. Then I wanted to upload to Play Books for my personal library only but didn't like the PDF result. Finally online converted to ePub but once uploaded to Play Books all my formatting was lost. So manually fixing everything in Sigil. That's it all in a nutshell. 😝

[tboy2000]

So much info and help. Greatly appreciated gentleman!

[phillipgessert]

(Snip) apologies, veered off topic.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by tboy2000

I wrote it all out in Word [...]

[...]

Then I pasted my story into Affinity Publisher and did my layout and exported to PDF.

[...]

Then I wanted to upload to Play Books [...].

[...]

Finally online converted to ePub [...]

PDF is the absolute worst format to convert from. ANYTHING would be better than that.

And you have no excuse, you have the original DOCX source files.

Why is Converting From PDF So Horrible?

PDF is only good as a final (output) format. It is designed for Print, not ebooks.

PDF converted into anything will be extremely problematic, because you have to redo:

• Text
• Formatting
  
  • Italics/Bold/Headings
• Images
  
  • Captions
• Blockquotes
• Alignment
  
  • Left/Center/Right
• [...]

When you go from something like DOCX->EPUB, all that information gets carried over automatically.

If you want more information, see my post in:

• 2022: "Remove blank pages"

What Should You Do Instead?

Go back to your DOCX / Word document and use Styles!!!

I highly recommend watching these 2 videos:

• Microsoft.com: "Word 2013: Use Quick Styles"
• "How to REALLY use Microsoft Office: Word Styles 101"

within ~20 minutes, you'll learn how to clean up your documents and save yourself HUNDREDS OF HOURS of needless pain/suffering.

For more info, see my posts in:

• 2020: "eBook Formatting in Sigil"

especially Posts #46, #50, and #52.

[tboy2000]

Thank you. Yes I used PDF for print to LuLu service. Didn't know it was bad for ebooks. Learned. Thank you.