trouble with indentions on conversion

[rick98761]

I have been reading digital books on my computer off and on for the past few years. I just ordered a Kindle last night, in preparation I am trying to get some of my books (mostly pdf and .lib) converted to the mobi format. I downloaded calibre and started converting some books. Everything looks fine except calibre is removing all indentions from the source files. I have searched the net and can not seem to find an answer as to why it does this. I realized during my searches that some people prefer the removal of indentions but I can't stand it. I have messed with some settings in calibre and reconverted some books, but have never got them to come out right. Does anyone have any tips they can share? Thanks.

[rick98761]

Well it seems if I open the converted files in Stanza they look fine. Is it just the built in calibre reader that removes indentions? Just want to make sure I have these ready to go, leaving for a trip the evening my kindle gets here. So I want to have something to read.

[kovidgoyal]

Every reader renders things differently, unfortunately, so there is no real way to be certain what the books will look like on the Kindle.

[cerement]

Part of the problem is how each program (and reader) handles rendering. Stanza is known to strip CSS formatting whereas Calibre attempts to retain the CSS formatting. What really matters is how the indents were handled. Where they done with CSS, with rendering of standard elements, with &nbsp;, or with spacer gifs? It might be something as simple as Stanza displaying <blockquotes> with indents as part of its normal rendering, whereas Calibre might not add any rendering to <blockquotes> unless specified by CSS ...

And even then there is no standard for how different (X)HTML elements should be rendered. Even with <p> tags, some browsers will place a blank line between paragraphs (business style), some will not but indent the first line of the paragraph (book style). Web designers have to maintain a full suite of browsers (as well as multiple versions of each browser) to test out their page designs simply because every browser insists on doing things its own way.

Even with the exact same mobi file, guaranteed that Stanza (on PC), Calibre, MobiPocket (on PC) and Kindle would each have a different rendering ...

[rick98761]

Originally Posted by cerement

Part of the problem is how each program (and reader) handles rendering. Stanza is known to strip CSS formatting whereas Calibre attempts to retain the CSS formatting. What really matters is how the indents were handled. Where they done with CSS, with rendering of standard elements, with &nbsp;, or with spacer gifs? It might be something as simple as Stanza displaying <blockquotes> with indents as part of its normal rendering, whereas Calibre might not add any rendering to <blockquotes> unless specified by CSS ...

And even then there is no standard for how different (X)HTML elements should be rendered. Even with <p> tags, some browsers will place a blank line between paragraphs (business style), some will not but indent the first line of the paragraph (book style). Web designers have to maintain a full suite of browsers (as well as multiple versions of each browser) to test out their page designs simply because every browser insists on doing things its own way.

Even with the exact same mobi file, guaranteed that Stanza (on PC), Calibre, MobiPocket (on PC) and Kindle would each have a different rendering ...

Well calibre has Kindle conversion settings. So hopefully it converted these to a kindle friendly format.