Exporting epub with InDesign: I lose blank lines!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

That’s what I meant by isolate them first. That’s exactly what I do. I think this is a situation where we talked about it so long that the context of my original comment got lost. The actual solution is to tie a ribbon around my finger, and my initial comment was made in case others need a ribbon too. It’s not actually that big a deal.

If you use Calibre, Diaps Editing Toolbag will really help turn those spans into <b>, <i>, and <b><i>.

[phillipgessert]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you use Calibre, Diaps Editing Toolbag will really help turn those spans into <b>, <i>, and <b><i>.

I don’t, as I like Sigil more for this, but I will look into this (though I prefer strong and em, likely another ball of wax we don’t need to dive into, lol). Thanks for the tip.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

I don’t, as I like Sigil more for this, but I will look into this (though I prefer strong and em, likely another ball of wax we don’t need to dive into, lol). Thanks for the tip.

AGGHGHGHGHGHGHGGG!!! SHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Stop the madness before he curmudges again!

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

That’s what I meant by isolate them first. That’s exactly what I do. I think this is a situation where we talked about it so long that the context of my original comment got lost.

Your advice was perfectly fine. Pandoc is an okay tool.

I sometimes do a similar Calibre EPUB->EPUB conversion to condense cruft too, making the code slightly more human-workable.

Side Note: You may also be interested in a talk that's being given on July 26th, 2020 by the creator of pandoc:

"Pandoc for TEXnicians" (John MacFarlane)

https://www.tug.org/tug2020/program.html

(TUG is the annual LaTeX conference. This year's is going to be fully free + online, and they'll also post the videos at a later date.)

Summary is in the spoiler:

Spoiler:

Sun, 26 Jul – 17:15 PM | John MacFarlane — UC Berkeley, Keynote address: Pandoc for TEXnicians

I will give an overview of the document conversion program pandoc, with an emphasis on how it might be useful to people who are already comfortable using LATEX to prepare documents. In the first part, I’ll discuss the use of pandoc to convert between LATEX and other common formats, including Microsoft Word docx and HTML. In the second part, I’ll give some reasons why even a seasoned TEXnician might want to consider writing documents in pandoc’s extended Markdown instead of LATEX, and I’ll teach some tricks that can be used to recover the tremendous power and flexibility of LATEX in this simpler idiom.

Originally Posted by Hitch

AGGHGHGHGHGHGHGGG!!! SHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Stop the madness before he curmudges again!

It was already settled last month. The thread to end all threads!

<i>, <em> or <span> for italics?

Especially see Post #67+ for all the juicy details.

Now we'll never see it brought up again. Settled. Done. Finito.

[phillipgessert]

Lol. I remember lurking this. Hence my tongue in cheek comment.

[Tex2002ans]

Whoops, you responded too quickly.

Make sure you check my previous post's edit. I added a pandoc thing you might be interested in.

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

Lol. I remember lurking this.

Sneaky, very sneaky.

[JSWolf]

delete post

[phillipgessert]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Whoops, you responded too quickly.

Make sure you check my previous post's edit. I added a pandoc thing you might be interested in.



Sneaky, very sneaky.

Thank you! I have wanted for some time to roll latex into my workflow. Usually tell myself it is impractical due to the arbitrary things folks want. Talk may not change that impracticality, but I bet it will be interesting and useful nonetheless. I am glad I participated in this discussion!

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

Thank you! [...] I am glad I participated in this discussion!

There's also one other talk that'll be of interest to the <i>/<em> people. I'll add it as a post in that topic.

[TheoHobbes]

You do not need to use Calibre, Sigil, Latex, CSS, or rock, paper, and scissors to fix this.

Create your Word file as usual. Don't add extra styles.

Open InDesign. Place your file.

Edit -> Find/Change

Find What: ^p^p
Change To: ^S^p

Empty lines are defined by two para breaks. This replaces one with a non-breaking space.

Problem solved.

This works on single blank lines between paragraphs. If you have more than one blank line (I use one line all the time, but you probably shouldn't use more) it removes half of them.

The solution to is to add a new style - maybe called Body Space.

In Find/Change -

Find Format:
[Select your original paragraph style]

Change Format:
[Select your new spaced style]

You can now set the before/after spacing on Body Space to whatever you want - with the caveat that Body Space is applied to the last line of text, not to the spaces.

You can also search for some other number of para breaks - ^p^p^p^p etc - and handle them as you like.

If you click the @s next to the Find/Change boxes you can enter any sequence of special/hidden characters and transform it how you want.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by TheoHobbes

You do not need to use Calibre, Sigil, Latex, CSS, or rock, paper, and scissors to fix this.

Create your Word file as usual. Don't add extra styles.

Open InDesign. Place your file.

Edit -> Find/Change

Find What: ^p^p
Change To: ^S^p

Empty lines are defined by two para breaks. This replaces one with a non-breaking space.

Problem solved.

This works on single blank lines between paragraphs. If you have more than one blank line (I use one line all the time, but you probably shouldn't use more) it removes half of them.

The solution to is to add a new style - maybe called Body Space.

In Find/Change -

Find Format:
[Select your original paragraph style]

Change Format:
[Select your new spaced style]

You can now set the before/after spacing on Body Space to whatever you want - with the caveat that Body Space is applied to the last line of text, not to the spaces.

You can also search for some other number of para breaks - ^p^p^p^p etc - and handle them as you like.

If you click the @s next to the Find/Change boxes you can enter any sequence of special/hidden characters and transform it how you want.

If you have paragraph spaces, you want to get rid of them. They make for a terrible reading experience.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by TheoHobbes

You do not need to use Calibre, Sigil, Latex, CSS, or rock, paper, and scissors to fix this.

Spoiler:

Create your Word file as usual. Don't add extra styles.

Open InDesign. Place your file.

Edit -> Find/Change

Find What: ^p^p
Change To: ^S^p

Empty lines are defined by two para breaks. This replaces one with a non-breaking space.

Problem solved.

This works on single blank lines between paragraphs. If you have more than one blank line (I use one line all the time, but you probably shouldn't use more) it removes half of them.

The solution to is to add a new style - maybe called Body Space.

In Find/Change -

Find Format:
[Select your original paragraph style]

Change Format:
[Select your new spaced style]

You can now set the before/after spacing on Body Space to whatever you want - with the caveat that Body Space is applied to the last line of text, not to the spaces.

You can also search for some other number of para breaks - ^p^p^p^p etc - and handle them as you like.

If you click the @s next to the Find/Change boxes you can enter any sequence of special/hidden characters and transform it how you want.

You did notice that this thread was started in 2009 and the last post before your post was in July 2020?

Necroposting is generally a lousy idea.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by TheoHobbes

You do not need to use [...] rock, paper, and scissors to fix this.

Create your Word file as usual. Don't add extra styles.

Hey, TheoHobbes. Welcome to MobileRead.

Originally Posted by DNSB

You did notice that this thread was started in 2009 and the last post before your post was in July 2020?

Necroposting is generally a lousy idea.

But that was 14 years ago! The original poster has probably grown old and retired by now... all because they were anxiously waiting at their computer for an answer to their InDesign empty paragraphs problem!

- - -

Well, if we want newer information on fixing the "ENTER ENTER" between paragraphs issue... I also wrote a tutorial 2 months ago for LibreOffice:

• /r/LibreOffice: "In libreoffice writer, with Find and Replace Regex, '/n' is only recognized as a Shift+Enter New Line. What's the Regex expression for Regular Enter New Line?"

[Turtle91]

Welcome to MR!

What you mentioned obviously works, but it is definitely NOT recommended to manually insert blank lines between paragraphs. That kind of styling breaks the functionality of most readers/devices. Instead, leave the spacing between paragraphs for the user to select via the reader/device settings.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Welcome to MR!

What you mentioned obviously works, but it is definitely NOT recommended to manually insert blank lines between paragraphs. That kind of styling breaks the functionality of most readers/devices. Instead, leave the spacing between paragraphs for the user to select via the reader/device settings.

Kindles, Kobos, and nooks do not hve settings to adjust paragraph spaces. That said, IMHO, it's best not to have them. If an eBook I want to read has them, I will rmeove them as they are really annoying.