Centering Chapter Headings

[Rellwood]

I don't like seeing "Chapter One" (or whatever chapter heading there is) along the left side of the page. Short of going into the book and manually centering it, is there some automatic way to set it? This generally applies to books that I have edited that were originally in paper format.

I default keep the original page style, but sometimes I set it to left orientation. I like the ragged edges and the natural spacing between words. However I do not like seeing the chapter headings on the left paragraph. I will go into a book and manually center (and often change the tag to "H2". Not a huge deal, but is there a way to do this automatically?

I know that there is a setting in conversion that allows the wizard to make changes, but I am not sure how to use it in this instance.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, and I plan to come back and keep an eye on this post today because I have a bad habit of posting and forgetting :-)

[BetterRed]

In the editor I would simply add 'text-align: center' to the css entry used for the "Chapter Nnnnn" heading paragraphs. If all such paragraphs didn't use the same css entry I would make it so that they do

BR

[Rellwood]

Thanks! I actually was able to see that in some books they were preceded by a specific tag. I went in and added the "text align: center;" option. However short of doing this each time, it seems there is no way of doing it automatically.

Especially annoying when trying to edit merged books.

Too many authors have very messy internals. I am so thankful for the beautification button.

[Rellwood]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

In the editor I would simply add 'text-align: center' to the css entry used for the "Chapter Nnnnn" heading paragraphs. If all such paragraphs didn't use the same css entry I would make it so that they do

BR

How can I add a css entry that would standardize each chapter heading if they weren't already set?

If I were smarter I would just learn how to edit books all together.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Rellwood

How can I add a css entry that would standardize each chapter heading if they weren't already set?

If I were smarter I would just learn how to edit books all together.

There are no (CSS or Style) standards for any part of the book, so you need to 'edit' the book to see how it was done, which may require following back to the CSS. This could be many DIV layers deep for some publishers as they build 'blocks' for various parts. This is why trying to Center it in Bookview does not always work...the centering was done by an outer block that only affects the inner ones.
Codeview rules them all

[BetterRed]

If the epub came from calibre conversion there'll probably be something like this for chapter headers in the xhtml files:

<h2 id="calibre_toc_3" class="calibre5">Chapter Two </h2>

And in the stylesheet.css there'll probably be something like this

.calibre5 {
    display: block;
    font-size: 1.375em;
    font-weight: bold;
    line-height: 1.2;
    margin-bottom: 0.83em;
    margin-left: 0;
    margin-right: 0;
    margin-top: 0.83em
    }

If you add the text-align centre into the calibre5 definition then everything that uses calibre5 will be centred.

Because the epub came from calibre conversion there's a good chance chapter headings will be the only things that will use that particular css class - use Search make sure that's true. It won't necessarily be 'calibre5' could be 'calibre101'

BR

[Rellwood]

@all,

Finding the tag that precedes the chapter heading was something I just realized to do today, but I thought you guys were suggesting that I could just insert my own tag in the cc file that would automatically target and format chapter headings regardless of what there already is. Absurd to think this, but it would be nice?

Yeah, it is kind of like a game to me to take a book with awful internals because of multiple conversions or editing and make it "pretty" again.

[Rellwood]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

If the epub came from calibre conversion there'll probably be something like this for chapter headers in the xhtml files:

<h2 id="calibre_toc_3" class="calibre5">Chapter Two </h2>

And in the stylesheet.css there'll probably be something like this

.calibre5 {
    display: block;
    font-size: 1.375em;
    font-weight: bold;
    line-height: 1.2;
    margin-bottom: 0.83em;
    margin-left: 0;
    margin-right: 0;
    margin-top: 0.83em
    }

If you add the text-align centre into the calibre5 definition then everything that uses calibre5 will be centred.

Because the epub came from calibre conversion there's a good chance chapter headings will be the only things that will use that particular css class - use Search make sure that's true. It won't necessarily be 'calibre5' could be 'calibre101'

BR

This is exactly what I discovered today. Funny how I have been at this for a few years now but am learning new things. I have had to go back and completely re-edit previous books because they were so badly done because of my lack of understanding. The worst part is having to wait until I come across the bad book when trying to read it for the first time and realizing I need to go to the computer to edit it and resend it to my Kindle before I can move forward.