&()nbsp , &()#160 , inconsistencies??

[rbruce1314]

I am quite familiar with the interchangeability of these two codes* for a blank space - but do they have to go this far??
*obviously without the brackets, but they don't display otherwise do they??!!

I was editing a book, removing (in particular) double spaces created in the epub conversion.

Doing fine, replacing &()160 with spacebar spaces.

Had to rush away from PC, so saved file and closed Sigil (only - not PC).

False alarm, so returned 5 mins later, opened same file with same version of Sigil to continue replacement - and 'Search (find)' wouldn't find &()160.............because on reopening the spaces had all become &()nbsp; 's !!!!!

Whatever caused that behaviour? Small, easily solved problem (once noticed!) but why did it do it in the first place??

Thanks

[Notjohn]

I used to avoid editing in Book View, because every tap on the spacebar created a non-breaking space. I think that is no longer the case.

But surely you don't WANT non-breaking spaces, do you?

[rbruce1314]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

I used to avoid editing in Book View, because every tap on the spacebar created a non-breaking space. I think that is no longer the case.

It still seems to do that - most of the time but not all of it!! And the nbsps didn't come from book view but from things like pdf converters and imported txt files.

But surely you don't WANT non-breaking spaces, do you?

Of course not - that's why I'm trying to edit them out!!!!!

[DiapDealer]

An older version of Sigil converted the non-breaking-space character (as opposed to the html entity) to   when opening/importing/saving code. Are you using the latest version of Sigil?

And yes, with   in the "Preserve Entities" preferences (as is default I believe), all  s would be converted to  s if changes are made in Book View (in all recent Sigil versions), or upon re-opening the epub.

You can either change the Preserve Entities preference from   to  , if you want to be able to edit in Book View without them changing. Or you can leave the Preserve Entities preference as it is and remember to not make any changes in Book View (or not to save/close before you're done).


Bottom line is:   won't survive a reopening of the epub no matter what setting you choose (in my experience, anyway). It will either be converted to   or it will be converted to a normal space character (when cleaning on opening/save is disabled in preferences).

[Toxaris]

Don't forget that the   does have its uses. It is not the same as a regular space.

BTW, if you want to avoid the automatic conversion of codes on the forum, you can put it between [noparse][/noparse] tags.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

BTW, if you want to avoid the automatic conversion of codes on the forum, you can put it between [noparse][/noparse] tags.

I meant to mention that in my post. Thanks!

[rbruce1314]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Bottom line is:   won't survive a reopening of the epub no matter what setting you choose (in my experience, anyway). It will either be converted to   or it will be converted to a normal space character (when cleaning on opening/save is disabled in preferences).

Thanks DiapDealer. Simple answer, clear and unavoidable behaviour, even if totally consistent within its own parameters!

But you're implying that cleaning removes these unwanteds anyway?? Cleaning is another mystery which sometimes happens with no input from me and other times not at all on saving, but I've never seen it yet replace the nbsps etc with blanks.

[Notjohn]

Now we have that wonderful Preview Pane, is there a good reason even to offer Book View, which tempts people to treat Sigil as a WYSIWYG editor?

Code View, Book View, and Preview Pane seems an embarrassment of riches.

(Perhaps people paste entire documents into Book View?)

[rbruce1314]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Now we have that wonderful Preview Pane, is there a good reason even to offer Book View, which tempts people to treat Sigil as a WYSIWYG editor?

Yes, IMHO. There are times when editing when book view is essential - not even preview is good enough without distorting the whole layout.

Things like asterisks between divisions of a chapter - better to centralize them but that's difficult to spot in code view unless you READ the code (as opposed to glancing at it to check).

Although I normally use code view to edit, in practice I'm forever switching between that and book view - and dividing books into chapters is a doddle in book view, a real pain in code view.

I may be the only one, but sorry Notjohn, I'd be lost without the ability to switch instantly to bookview while editing in code view.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by rbruce1314

Yes, IMHO. There are times when editing when book view is essential - not even preview is good enough without distorting the whole layout.

Things like asterisks between divisions of a chapter - better to centralize them but that's difficult to spot in code view unless you READ the code (as opposed to glancing at it to check).

Although I normally use code view to edit, in practice I'm forever switching between that and book view - and dividing books into chapters is a doddle in book view, a real pain in code view.

I may be the only one, but sorry Notjohn, I'd be lost without the ability to switch instantly to bookview while editing in code view.

Forgive me, but: why doesn't Preview work for this? You can launch it, and have it live as you go. Doesn't that work the same, effectively, as BookView?

Hitch

[theducks]

I keep the Preview pane (F10) on the upper (portrait) Monitor

The only obnoxious ting is the fighting-Synch. You can not go from CV to Preview and use the scroll bar without first clicking into the TEXT. If you don't, it just scrolls back

[signum]

Book view is absolutely essential, in my view, for the final proof-reading of any book I'm working on. It is only at this time that some hidden misspellings pop out, such as the unintended hyphen in "as-sure", which easily passes the spell checker and remains hidden (to me) behind a lot of formatting directions found in the code view. The syntax is correct but the meaning is scrambled with the hyphen left in. Overall look and feel also become apparent only when book view is used. If Sigil supported book view better, I'd be using it a lot more than I do now. As it is, I'm really discouraged when I try to use ctrl-v to insert a single character and find that it's been surrounded by an extremely correct, but unnecessary, span to ensure it has been inserted as "text". Bah!

[Notjohn]

The Preview Pane serves the identical purpose, and what's more it stays live on the screen (you don't have to switch back and forth) and updates in almost the moment you make the change in code view. I don't use Book View at all any more, and I've always avoided using it to make editing changes such as you describe (ctrl-V resulting in a span).

But then I've been writing web pages for twenty years, so I'm comfortable looking at html.

Oops, sorry! Yes, I do use Book View to split the book into sections as my first step in building the epub. As R Bruce says, it's much easier there.

[Turtle91]

Is there some special function making it easier to split in book view?? I just use search and replace to search on whatever code is used to define the beginning of a section (chapter) and replace it with the new page command.

search: <h2> or <p style="page-break-before:always"> (or whatever)
replace: <hr class="sigil_split_marker" />\n<h2>

Followed by F6. This splits them all in a couple seconds. If I find a one-off page that was coded differently as I'm cleaning, then there is a nice little button at the top of the screen to "split at cursor".

Typing "<hr class="sigil_split_marker" />" once every book might be considered a lot of work, so I made it a "clip"...so it ends up being a simple click of the mouse. I have several clips for shortcuts that I use constantly: (.*?), <strong>\1</strong>, <em>\1</em>, <div class="">\1</div>, <span class="">\1</span>, <blockquote class="">\1</bockquote>, etc.

I previously used BV for my final look to see how it would appear in a larger screen but, just yesterday, I found out that you can double-click the header of the preview pane and it toggles from docked to not-docked. If your not-docked window is sized to full screen, then it is even better than BV! If you are lucky enough to have a second monitor, like Ducky mentioned, you can have the preview pane un-docked to the second screen.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Is there some special function making it easier to split in book view??

I could never, in good conscience, recommend splitting in Book View. Too much potential for soupy markup being introduced. Having said that however, the process for WYSIWYG users assumes that markers will be manually inserted one at a time (for later mass splitting) or one-at-a-time "Split at Cursor" actions will be performed. I have a feeling that yours and NotJohn's definitions of "easier" are simply different.