Blank line between paragraphs going from Atlantis to ePub

[Alan]

I have scanned an old book of mine into the computer that is suffering from deterioration due to acid pulp paper, science fiction paperback from around 1962. The book uses a blank line between paragraphs to denote a scene change. I have been reading it on my Kobo Glo ereader and found that the blank line disappears (is at the bottom of the screen) sometimes. I used a blank line to end the 1st paragraph and turned on Widows/Orphans and Keep with next. The 2nd/next paragraph is normal and normally has the blank line visible before it. The above solution puts the blank line at the top of the screen (should be 2 lines per default ereader Widows/Orphans of 2). Does anyone know of a way to force the last printed line of a paragraph to be on the same page as the next paragraph?
I ask because a couple of times when this happened I had to refer to the paperback to understand what I was suddenly reading as I did not recognize the scene change.

[Robert]

You could try adjusting the line spacing of these last paragraphs. With an appropriate value, the paragraph will span 2 pages. I have achieved this in a test document by changing the default “Single Line” Line Spacing to “Exactly 15 pts”. The extra line spacing was hardly noticeable but it pushed the last line to the next page. You could even associate the Normal or Body Text style with such Line Spacing (Exactly 15 pts).

Note that you might find helpful tips at Improving the Bottom Line.
HTH
Robert

[rstroud]

I am not exactly sure what you are describing, but I think you are saying that a "scene break" empty line sometimes is not recognizable as such because it falls at a point where one page rolls over to the next in your ebook reader.

First, let me say that you are lucky to have obtained anything good from a scan of an old book.

Second, I think that your best solution is to use a marker (like three asterisks ***) on the blank line that shows a scene break. This is often how such scene breaks are indicated anyway. That way, your scene breaks will not get lost.

You can do this fairly easily by some tweaking of the HTML code. At least, I think you can. However, I need to see how the blank lines are coded in the HTML of the epub.

If you want to send the Atlantis document and the epub to me, I will be glad to take a look to see if this is something that can be easily fixed by the method that I have suggested. If it looks easy, I will fix it for you. If it looks like it is going to be a real mess, then I will let you know.

I know how to use Regex (which is search-and-replace on steroids), so I might be able to do this with no hassle.

rolandraystroud@gmail.com

[Alan]

Thank you Robert for the link. The problem that I see is caused by the reflowable nature of ePubs and I only saw it on my Glo several times out of the dozens of blank lines between paragraphs.

Thanks rstroud, you're description is correct on what I am seeing. The line or asterisks (used in a recent book I read) are my fall back Plan B as it adds a paragraph for each instance. I do not know HTML or CSS and at my age am unwilling to learn them for this simple instance as Atlantis does a good job in ePub conversion from RTF. I have determined that setting a paragraph style with Space after of 9 points (RTF body text is 9 point for printing paperback pages) and having Keep with next and Widow/Orphan set does drag the end of the paragraph before the blank line to the next page. To my surprise last night I saw that the supposed default of Widow/Orphan 2 brought 3 printing lines along plus the blank space after line, which does solve the problem. Aesthetically I had hoped for 1 printed line on the ereader at the top of the screen followed by the blank line. Given that I have a workable solution for myself I will not ask you to look at the HTML.

[rstroud]

I am glad that you found an acceptable solution!

[Alan]

As an update I used tweak_epub to look at the CSS generated for the book. Widows and Orphans were both 2 for this paragraph style. I found that setting Widow/Orphans to undefined made them both equal 1. This resulted in what I wanted to see on my KoboGlo ereader so the paragraph at the bottom of the screen would move its last line to the next screen and have the blank Space after before the next paragraph. This way there is always a readily visible blank line between paragraphs as in the book I scanned into my computer.