LRF - losing indents and paragraph spacing

[jjansen]

I am very sorry if this is answered in the forums somewhere. I did try and look.

I have a couple of books in LRF format. I want to convert them to epub. When I view the LRF document in Calibre the paragraphs are indented and the only time there are blank lines between the paragraphs is when there is a scene change. I would like to keep that formatting. Every time I convert to epub I get left justified paragraphs with a blank line between each one which I don't want.

On the conversion I took the defaults which means that Look & Feel default to not inserting blank lines and not removing spacing between paragraphs. I thought this would do what I wanted. Is there an option that I am missing that I need keep the paragraph formatting the same as it is in the LRF?

Thanks
Jackie

[ldolse]

What other settings do you haven enabled during conversion? If you're not sure you can go to the job details for one of the conversions(click on the lower right corner of the main window) and copy/paste that here. The first part of that log lists all the settings that were enabled.

[jjansen]

Thanks - here are the conversion job details........Jackie

Convert book 1 of 1 (The Whitechapel Conspiracy)
Resolved conversion options
calibre version: 0.7.42
{'asciiize': False,
'author_sort': None,
'authors': None,
'base_font_size': 0.0,
'book_producer': None,
'change_justification': u'original',
'chapter': u"//*[((name()='h1' or name()='h2') and re:test(., 'chapter|book|section|part\\s+', 'i')) or @class = 'chapter']",
'chapter_mark': u'pagebreak',
'comments': None,
'cover': 'c:\\docume~1\\jjansen\\locals~1\\temp\\calibre_0. 7.42_tmp_x4hcbp\\calibre_0.7.42_whwetp.jpeg',
'debug_pipeline': None,
'dehyphenate': True,
'delete_blank_paragraphs': True,
'disable_font_rescaling': False,
'dont_split_on_page_breaks': False,
'enable_heuristics': False,
'epub_flatten': False,
'extra_css': None,
'extract_to': None,
'fix_indents': True,
'flow_size': 260,
'font_size_mapping': None,
'format_scene_breaks': True,
'html_unwrap_factor': 0.4,
'input_encoding': None,
'input_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.InputProfile object at 0x042C4210>,
'insert_blank_line': False,
'insert_metadata': True,
'isbn': None,
'italicize_common_cases': True,
'keep_ligatures': True,
'language': None,
'level1_toc': None,
'level2_toc': None,
'level3_toc': None,
'line_height': 0.0,
'linearize_tables': False,
'margin_bottom': 5.0,
'margin_left': 5.0,
'margin_right': 5.0,
'margin_top': 5.0,
'markup_chapter_headings': True,
'max_toc_links': 50,
'minimum_line_height': 120.0,
'no_chapters_in_toc': False,
'no_default_epub_cover': False,
'no_inline_navbars': False,
'no_svg_cover': False,
'output_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.SonyReaderOutput object at 0x042C4610>,
'page_breaks_before': u"//*[name()='h1' or name()='h2']",
'prefer_metadata_cover': False,
'preserve_cover_aspect_ratio': False,
'pretty_print': True,
'pubdate': None,
'publisher': None,
'rating': None,
'read_metadata_from_opf': 'c:\\docume~1\\jjansen\\locals~1\\temp\\calibre_0. 7.42_tmp_x4hcbp\\calibre_0.7.42_znsavn.opf',
'remove_first_image': True,
'remove_paragraph_spacing': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing_indent_size': 0.0,
'renumber_headings': True,
'series': None,
'series_index': None,
'smarten_punctuation': True,
'sr1_replace': None,
'sr1_search': None,
'sr2_replace': None,
'sr2_search': None,
'sr3_replace': None,
'sr3_search': None,
'tags': None,
'timestamp': None,
'title': None,
'title_sort': None,
'toc_filter': None,
'toc_threshold': 6,
'unwrap_lines': True,
'use_auto_toc': False,
'verbose': 2}
InputFormatPlugin: LRF Input running

[ldolse]

Well, I don't see anything enabled that could be causing a problem. Without knowing how the indents are defined in the lrf it's difficult to know if there is a specfic fix. There is a 'fix indents' option under heuristics that can repair them if they were defined a certain way, but I don't think the normal lrf conversion would have hurt that.

You could open a bug with the book if you want, as it sounds like there may be some problem with the conversion and how these books are defined, but there is a potential fix using extra css.

Add this line to the extra css box under 'Look and Feel':

p {margin-top:0.3em; margin-bottom:0.3em; text-indent:3%; text-align:justify}

That 'should' indent every single paragraph, not sure if every one was indented before. You can also tweak the top and bottom margins as you see fit - I prefer a very small amount of space, hence .3em.

[jjansen]

Thank-you. Actually my main concern wasn't the indents but the changing of the spacing between paragraphs. In the LRF There was no spaces between most paragraphs. When there was a space it was indicative of a scene change. Now every paragraph has a space between it and the next paragraph and you can't tell when it means something and when it doesn't. That is what I was trying to prevent happening.........Jackie

[ldolse]

Ah, ok. Theoretically that extra css I proposed should fix that too, but there are a lot of ways scene breaks could be defined, I can't guarantee it will work. Basically my suggestion will work if the scene break is defined as it's own empty paragraph. Do you have larger spaces around scene breaks in the conversion, or is the space identical to the rest of the paragraph spacing?

[jjansen]

In the LRF there are larger spaces in the scene breaks. After conversion in epub there are not. The paragraph spacing doesn't change using the extra css line.

All I really want to do is tell Calibre not to change the existing paragraph spacing. The document looks great when I open the original LRF file in Calibre.

[ldolse]

Sounds like a bug to me. bugs.calibre-ebook.com - please attach an example file so someone can figure out what's going wrong.

[DoctorOhh]

@jjansen You might find this post (and the next 9) in this thread interesting.

Kovid's response to bugs created in that thread was,

"calibre's LRF input plugin only supports LRF created by calibre. I have no interest in addng support for BD LRF files. Patches welcome."

Maybe a developer will have a need or some time and supply a patch.

Originally Posted by jjansen

All I really want to do is tell Calibre not to change the existing paragraph spacing. The document looks great when I open the original LRF file in Calibre.

While I understand your sentiment the problem is that LRF isn't a nice container for html like lit, mobi or epub. It is a proprietary format based on objects and the calibre conversion produces a very readable output. This might be as good as it gets, the code in calibre is final and the odds are that it is not going to be updated (But you can always ask).

Have you tried converting with the Remove spacing between paragraphs option checked? Then looking at the code in Sigil and see if Scene breaks are indicated in some manner that makes Search and Replace feasible.

Good Luck.

[ldolse]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Maybe a developer will have a need or some time and supply a patch.

User_None and I have just been working improving Calibre's support for preserving scene breaks across input formats, so if I get an example book and can figure out how they're defined in LRF I'll be happy to wrap it into the other scene break improvements.

The next release will be improved quite a bit in this department in general, preserving them across a lot more input formats using some of the heuristic processing, but I wasn't aware LRF was a problem in some cases. The LRF code I've seen looks like pretty decent xhtml, but not sure if it's been massaged by Calibre already when it winds up in the debug folder.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by ldolse

User_None and I have just been working improving Calibre's support for preserving scene breaks across input formats, so if I get an example book and can figure out how they're defined in LRF I'll be happy to wrap it into the other scene break improvements.

I've already converted all my lrf files but this will be excellent news to many.

Originally Posted by ldolse

The LRF code I've seen looks like pretty decent xhtml, but not sure if it's been massaged by Calibre already when it winds up in the debug folder.

I'm relatively sure it is messaged prior to the input folder.

Kovid responded to a user inquiring about creating a patch below.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

All the LRF related files are in src/calibre/ebooks/lrf but this would be a far from trivial change.

[ldolse]

I found a lrf in my library that seems to have the same problem - There is enough information preserved that putting a scene break back should be doable. I'll add the pattern to the 'format scene breaks' option in Heuristics. Not sure if it will work across all LRF files, but it's worth a shot.

[ldolse]

Edit: Fix is in 7.44, let me know if it works.

The fix will require heuristics and the option 'format scene breaks' to be enabled.