Quick tip - copying from plain text

[neonbible]

You will notice that copying content from a plain text file and then pasting it into Sigil causes a bit of a mess. What happens is it puts <p>..</p> tags around each line! This means each new line has a blank line.

Consider the following text from a plain text / ASCII document:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Cras scelerisque, nunc et bibendum tempus, enim lectus 
sodales urna, id sodales metus erat eget velit. Nulla 
facilisi. Cras diam turpis, scelerisque et fringilla sit 
amet, adipiscing quis ipsum. Aenean enim felis, lobortis 
in auctor faucibus, dapibus ut metus. Praesent sed arcu at 

lorem luctus tempus non nec purus. Aenean tristique, quam 
at tristique luctus, magna enim auctor leo, ac blandit 
neque felis id nunc. Sed eget tortor nec lectus tristique 
facilisis eget ut mauris. Nunc vitae faucibus nisi. Quisque 
auctor nulla in quam fermentum sed vehicula nulla commodo. 
Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et 
malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Etiam eu diam in mauris 
malesuada sollicitudin.

Tested with Sigil 0.3.0

Scenario 1: You want to maintain fixed width

Not always a good idea with eBooks. If you happen to be reading on a small screen device such as a mobile and have a large font causing the end of each line to be cut off, the text will not flow nicely.

However in some cases, text is formatted in fixed width for a reason, aesthetic or otherwise. If you want to maintain this formatting, follow these steps:

1) Switch to Code or Split View.

2) Hit Ctrl-H or go to Edit | Replace.

3) "<br />" replace with "".

4) "<p>" replace with "".

5) "</p>" replace with "<br />".

The result should look exactly like your plain text format!

Scenario 2: Get rid of word wrap/fixed-width but keep blank lines between paragraphs

This is much more suited for ebooks, flows well and caters for font size changes. But breaks the formatting/width size of the original source.

1) Switch to Code or Split View.

2) Hit Ctrl-H or go to Edit | Replace.

3) "<p>" replace with "".

4) "</p>" replace with "".

5) "<br />" replace with "<br /><br />"

[neonbible]

Just thinking about it, not sure if getting rid of <p> tags is bad practice?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by neonbible

Just thinking about it, not sure if getting rid of <p> tags is bad practice?

Only if you actually want your ePUBs to pass ePUBcheck. ;-)

Hitch

[neonbible]

I think if you save it as an epub after, it will automatically put in the <p> tags.