using sigil to make changes befote conversion

[alansplace]

hi, i usually restrict my participation to the calibre and kindle forums, but this question belongs here i believe.

there's a known problem with some epubs that when converted to mobi (using calibre) leave a fairly wide and unnecessay left margin. to fix this i just finished doing this (afterwards it converts w/o the expanded left margin).

i opened the epub in sigil and then opened all the pieces of the text portion. one by one i separately selected all the text in each of the pieces and then i pressed the decrease indent button at the top (again one by one) to get rid of the offending left margin.

is there any 'select all' function like the standard in windows (in the edit pull down)? further, is there any 'select all' for all the pieces at once? and lastly, is there a better way to accomplish this end result?

thanks

[theducks]

Ctrl-A does not work?

Note add indent usually is done by Blockquotes
so if you don't have any ??? for remove.

Switch to Codeview and figure what class is controlling the indent (not the same as margin or Padding) of the section.
Then find that class in the stylesheet (see the page headers for which stylesheet if more than one).
Make your chang nd look at the page in bookview
Repeat as needed.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by theducks

Ctrl-A does not work?

Note add indent usually is done by Blockquotes
so if you don't have any ??? for remove.

Switch to Codeview and figure what class is controlling the indent (not the same as margin or Padding) of the section.
Then find that class in the stylesheet (see the page headers for which stylesheet if more than one).
Make your chang nd look at the page in bookview
Repeat as needed.

haven't wrote or modified a line of code since dos/interpreted basic was king of microcomputers. when i look at that code view i get a headache and suffer confusion.

thanks

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by alansplace

i opened the epub in sigil and then opened all the pieces of the text portion. one by one i separately selected all the text in each of the pieces and then i pressed the decrease indent button at the top (again one by one) to get rid of the offending left margin.

is there any 'select all' function like the standard in windows (in the edit pull down)? further, is there any 'select all' for all the pieces at once? and lastly, is there a better way to accomplish this end result?

thanks

There is actually a much easier way to do this. Look at the XML files and look at the class(es) used and then in the CSS make the left & right margins both 0. That will solve the problem very easily. I do it that way because on my 650 I prefer no margins.

Say the code read... <p class="para"> you would find .para in the CSS and change or add in... margin-left: 0 & margin-right: 0. That would fix the class para to have no margins and usually there's a class like <p class="noindent"> for the paragraphs that have no indents. Do the same fix. And for any other class that needs it.

But if there is a page template file, you'll need to delete it and in the OPF delete the reference to it as well as delete the call to it in all the CSS files.

In the CSS if there is a body style, make the left, right, top, & bottom margins all 0. And if there is an @page declaration, delete it.

And finally if the ePub is a Calibre made ePub, go into all the XML files and delete the @page style it puts in. Calibre puts in a top & bottom margin of 5pt and that is a bug.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And finally if the ePub is a Calibre made ePub, go into all the XML files and delete the @page style it puts in. Calibre puts in a top & bottom margin of 5pt and that is a bug.

That is set-able in Calibre Preferences: Common options: Page Set up.

I use 2,2,16,2 for my ADE based reader with those edge numbers

[cybmole]

if is is a blockquotes issue you could also use find / replace all to change every instance of <blockquote to <p

calibre has an "remove fake margins" tick box in the conversion options which will take out unwanted left space. it is in preferences - conversion - common options.

it also has a ignore margins tick box in preferences - conversion - output options - mobi - which gets rid of kindle margins.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by alansplace

haven't wrote or modified a line of code since dos/interpreted basic was king of microcomputers. when i look at that code view i get a headache and suffer confusion.

thanks

don't be intimidated by the word code. It is not programming. The so called code view shows the tagged nature of html used in epub and for your browser. All it means is that the text is contained in tags to help the reader understand the nature of the text, for example a paragraph has a <p> in front of it and a </p> at the end. This is not too had to learn and really important if you want to modify your epub files. Read about HTML and ePub in our wiki for details or find some tutorials. it is worth a little learning effort for the future.

Dale

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by theducks

Ctrl-A does not work?

Note add indent usually is done by Blockquotes
so if you don't have any ??? for remove.

Switch to Codeview and figure what class is controlling the indent (not the same as margin or Padding) of the section.
Then find that class in the stylesheet (see the page headers for which stylesheet if more than one).
Make your chang nd look at the page in bookview
Repeat as needed.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is actually a much easier way to do this. Look at the XML files and look at the class(es) used and then in the CSS make the left & right margins both 0. That will solve the problem very easily. I do it that way because on my 650 I prefer no margins.

Say the code read... <p class="para"> you would find .para in the CSS and change or add in... margin-left: 0 & margin-right: 0. That would fix the class para to have no margins and usually there's a class like <p class="noindent"> for the paragraphs that have no indents. Do the same fix. And for any other class that needs it.

But if there is a page template file, you'll need to delete it and in the OPF delete the reference to it as well as delete the call to it in all the CSS files.

In the CSS if there is a body style, make the left, right, top, & bottom margins all 0. And if there is an @page declaration, delete it.

And finally if the ePub is a Calibre made ePub, go into all the XML files and delete the @page style it puts in. Calibre puts in a top & bottom margin of 5pt and that is a bug.

Originally Posted by theducks

That is set-able in Calibre Preferences: Common options: Page Set up.

I use 2,2,16,2 for my ADE based reader with those edge numbers

Originally Posted by cybmole

if is is a blockquotes issue you could also use find / replace all to change every instance of <blockquote to <p

calibre has an "remove fake margins" tick box in the conversion options which will take out unwanted left space. it is in preferences - conversion - common options.

it also has a ignore margins tick box in preferences - conversion - output options - mobi - which gets rid of kindle margins.

Originally Posted by DaleDe

don't be intimidated by the word code. It is not programming. The so called code view shows the tagged nature of html used in epub and for your browser. All it means is that the text is contained in tags to help the reader understand the nature of the text, for example a paragraph has a <p> in front of it and a </p> at the end. This is not too had to learn and really important if you want to modify your epub files. Read about HTML and ePub in our wiki for details or find some tutorials. it is worth a little learning effort for the future.

Dale

wow! thanks to you all! i've pasted this entire thread into an oo odt and will refer to it the next time i run into the need to use sigil to fix up an epub prior to calibre conversion to mobi.

thanks to all again!

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

don't be intimidated by the word code. It is not programming. The so called code view shows the tagged nature of html used in epub and for your browser. All it means is that the text is contained in tags to help the reader understand the nature of the text, for example a paragraph has a <p> in front of it and a </p> at the end. This is not too had to learn and really important if you want to modify your epub files. Read about HTML and ePub in our wiki for details or find some tutorials. it is worth a little learning effort for the future.

Dale

dale, thanks, i'm not intimated by the word 'code', but when i try and read it and get an immediate headache, i panic and quit looking. i've forced myself to look at it a bit longer and still my brain filters are saying, is that swahili or mandarin? i'll continue to fight it and i'll get by, i'm sure!

i simply never imagined that reinvigorating my reading would entail reading *CODE* again.

thanks

[alansplace]

wow! i went back to the original epub (a calibre generated epub) and exploded it in calibre (thanks for this idea to blossom in the kindle forum). then i edited (notepad++) both the css and toc files in about 5 minutes or less. in the css i changed all occurrences of margin-left that were not 0 to 0. in the toc i fixed some errors in the text (i'd not yet mentioned this problem here). now the generated mobi is fine on my kindle. hooray

thanks again to dale, cybmole, the ducks and jswolf.

[cybmole]

glad to have helped. some folks work your way, with notepad plus, others ( me included) use Sigil to open & edit the epub. Sigil has it's own helpful forum.

if you are fussy about having working kindle 5 way navigation controls in every book then you may end up learning enough of sigil to be able to fix up chapter headers, I learnt it for that reason, & for auto fixing mid-sentence line breaks.

you can also hook in a free spell checker ( microspell) but I abandoned that as it is awkward to use & because most books have lots of ( intentional) capitalised proper names - people & place names - which spell checker insists on flagging up.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

...
Say the code read... <p class="para"> you would find .para in the CSS and change or add in... margin-left: 0 & margin-right: 0. That would fix the class para to have no margins and usually there's a class like <p class="noindent"> for the paragraphs that have no indents. Do the same fix. And for any other class that needs it...

I've seen some problem ePubs that have margins set in both paragraph "class" styles (e.g. those JSWolf mentions) and a global style for the <body> tag. Be sure to zero out any margin-left and margin-right listed under <body> also.

In addition, I've encountered files that in addition to margins set in the CSS file(s) have margins in a <style> section in the <head> section of the XHTML files as well. Check for those and set them to zero if present.