spacing between paragraphs

[franklekens]

I have a few e-books that contain spacing between paragraphs. I know some people actually prefer that, but I hate it, I want the text to look like it does in a book, not with spacing between every paragraph. Only when there are actuall blank lines.

What's the easiest way to remove those, or is there none? Modify Epub doesn't seem to have a setting for it.
I've done a convert epub to epub with the "delete blank lines between paragraphs" in heuristic processing checked, but that doesn't seem to help here. Probably they're not blank lines but some setting like "xx space before/after paragraph", like MS Word's dumb default.

Do I first have to get a PhD in css editing or something to remedy this (which is not going to happen), or is there an easy way?

[Sirtel]

No easy way other than editing the css. And no, you don't need a degree to do this. It's not actually that hard, once you've familiarized yourself with it a bit.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by franklekens

I have a few e-books that contain spacing between paragraphs. I know some people actually prefer that, but I hate it, I want the text to look like it does in a book, not with spacing between every paragraph. Only when there are actuall blank lines.

What's the easiest way to remove those, or is there none? Modify Epub doesn't seem to have a setting for it.
I've done a convert epub to epub with the "delete blank lines between paragraphs" in heuristic processing checked, but that doesn't seem to help here. Probably they're not blank lines but some setting like "xx space before/after paragraph", like MS Word's dumb default.

Do I first have to get a PhD in css editing or something to remedy this (which is not going to happen), or is there an easy way?

I learned a lot about HTML/CSS and eBooks by editing my eBooks.

[fogice]

The brute force method, which works maybe 80% of the time, is:
Convert books > Look & Feel > [v] Remove space between paragraphs, and Indent size 1.5em

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by fogice

The brute force method, which works maybe 80% of the time, is:
Convert books > Look & Feel > [v] Remove space between paragraphs, and Indent size 1.5em

I find it works 100% of time on PD sources, though I prefer 1.3em. I also smarten punctuation with those.

If a bought book has the "children's book" spacing (and maybe stupidly indent too) I edit rather than using the automatic conversion. I do convert ALL added ebooks with the remove line-height and white-space in the CSS removal settings.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I find it works 100% of time on PD sources, though I prefer 1.3em. I also smarten punctuation with those.

If a bought book has the "children's book" spacing (and maybe stupidly indent too) I edit rather than using the automatic conversion. I do convert ALL added ebooks with the remove line-height and white-space in the CSS removal settings.

Removing removing paragraph spacing doesn't always works. When an eBook has a blank space for the section break designation, sometimes that too can be removed.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Removing removing paragraph spacing doesn't always works. When an eBook has a blank space for the section break designation, sometimes that too can be removed.

That tends to be only in bought books, where I never automatically remove spacing. I'd make sure that has also a no-indent style. I've not seen it in PD.

Sometimes though a blank paragraph or a <br /> is used for paragraph spacing and I'd fix that. The only useful thing I see for <br /> in an ebook is to break a heading on to two or more lines as you might want only one heading tag per heading for automatic TOC generation or automatic file breaks in conversions etc. There is no reason ever for an empty <p></p>, either the preceding or current paragraph should have a style.

[hobnail]

I also use the brute force method fogice mentioned. Then I get out my big sledge hammer and fix other things (things that calibre's books converter doesn't handle) with the following regexp for the css file. I do this in Sigil. The following goes in the upper search and replace box and in the replace with box is nothing. So all of those css directives are removed, regardless of the value. Afterwords all text is the same size, except for h2, h3, etc. (although many authors format headers with the p tag so they end up not looking as nice). One of the main things I'm after is being able to open a book and not needing to fiddle with the font size slider. The page-break stuff was recently added after I had a book with weird page breaks.

(  display: block;
|  font-size: .*
|  letter-spacing:.*
|  line-break: strict;
|  line-height: .*
| page-break-after:.*
| page-break-before:.*
| page-break-inside:.*
|  vertical-align: .*
|  white-space: pre-wrap;
)

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by hobnail

One of the main things I'm after is being able to open a book and not needing to fiddle with the font size slider.

That can be easily done without using the sledgehammer method. I've not touched the font size slider on my Kobos for years.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

That can be easily done without using the sledgehammer method. I've not touched the font size slider on my Kobos for years.

I do touch the font slider if I am in bed and want the font size larger. I do put the font slider back the the size I read most of the time.