indd > epub all line breaks (carriage returns) removed

[Dan Greyhound]

I'm having exactly the same problem. Did anyone find an answer?

[SJRiegel]

Try this: 

Instead of using an empty paragraph to add space, use the built-in Space Before or Space After paragraph settings to create the gap. Double returns for spacing is not a recommended method.

Also, use line breaks instead of paragraph returns for the lines that should not have space after them.

[Dan Greyhound]

Previously it was the only way I could get the spacing to work. Has something changed in the conversion process?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This is really the correct answer: don't use soft returns (by any name) in documents meant for EPUB export.

However, there is a specific setting in reflowable export, whether to leave them or strip them (the latter being the standard-based alternative):

Check this, and soft returns will be stripped. Uncheck it, and they will (usually) remain.

But the real solution is to use styles to manage line spacing and paragraphs, not line breaks by any name.

—

[Dan Greyhound]

Thanks, but these aren't line breaks, they are returns between stanzas of poems so unchecking forced line breaks doesn't apply or do anything. I don't understand why it worked in CS6 but now doesn't work in CC, the CS6 conversion method respected returns whereas it often didn't respect paragraph spacing in my experience

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Just as a start, CS6 is... really obsolete. There have been many small changes, not to mention the much larger overhauls. And EPUB export has many, many differences.

There is simply no way to get this kind of spacing without using spacing above/below on a paragraph style, and at least two styles if you have variations in spacing. I don't know what might have worked in a CS6 document that doesn't now; that spacing hasn't been changed and the culprit is almost always use of soft returns. Oh, and I just noticed the other detail: EPUB always strips multiple returns. Empty paragraphs are deleted. It's possible older export methods somehow preserveed them.

Adjust your styles to use spacing above/below and you should be able to get (or recreate) the layout you're seeking.

—

[Dan Greyhound]

Okay, thanks for your help. It's just a bit annoying as I used to be able to use the print design file and just export it to epub and, with the exception of a few bugs, it worked. Double returns were preserved along with everything else. The last time I did this was in 2020. Now I have to completely redesign the file to get it to work. It's not what I'd call progress!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I don't think much has changed since 2020... but a lot has changed since 2012. EPUB export is, overall, more respecting of standards instead of arbitrary choices; progress is where you find it. 🙂

It is not hard to maintain a dual format for both print and EPUB, but you can no longer cut corners on some of the details and depend on export "fixes" to compensate.

—

[Dan Greyhound]

I just don't see the benefit of having to go through a huge book of poetry and apply a new style for every first line of a new stanza to create a line space where a return used to work just fine (and is how most writers will have provided the original text). This seems like a massive retrograde step to me. Think I'll fire up CS6 on the old computer 😉

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

If you want to generate EPUBs that are compatible with current generations of readers, I don't see that there's any choice but to format the material correctly. I am not sure CS6 will still run and export EPUB without other problems; we see posts here almost every day from users trying to get CS6 to work a decade after its release. This is not a closed loop; changes to hardware and OS and Adobe feature support are all fluid things, and it's been a long, long ten years in this game. And on the EPUB/reader end, v3.0 was still new and raw ten years ago, and almost no one complied with the doc standards. (Plus ça change, however.)

There are simple Find/Change and script solutions that would automate a lot of the update. But before you invest any time in updating, I'd do at least a few rounds of tests to make sure you have identified all the technical faults in the CS6 document and correct them all at the same time — with a recommendation to follow standards, not patches that happen to work this round — rather than just fix this one problem.

I mean, count your blessings. You could be writing out a completely clean revision with a quill pen. 🙂 And, as well, your material is simply lightly formatted text. It gets really messy when you try to fix older/noncompliant documents with complex layouts, graphics, etc.

—

[Dan Greyhound]

Putting a return between stanzas is hardly an arbitrary choice either, it's how people have done it for decades. Why would InDesign not respect the way most people format their text and instead ask them to do something more time-consuming and awkward? Just makes no sense.

[BobLevine]

InDesign is and always has been style-driven. If you can't be bothered to create proper styles, I don't know what to tell you.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Putting a return between stanzas is hardly an arbitrary choice either, it's how people have done it for decades.

...on typewriters. And on the universal e-typewriter, Word. Using styles and spacing was fundamental with the third or so generation of layout tools... including ID from the start.

I could be harsh and say it's all your fault for not doing it right from the start, long ago... but you were hardly alone, so it's common to have to clean up and redo work from that era. Complaining that the entire field — a full decade later! — has moved to a more structured, professional and standards-based workflow, and that older methods are less and less supported/tolerated in new software, isn't very productive.

What you're encountering, here, is kind of the sunset for the "hack and slash and make it look good when you hit Print" mode of doing page layout. That still works, if your end doc is on paper from your local laser printer. But in a world where you need to generate PDF, EPUB, HTML and other "downstream" document formats, using scissors and paste and white-out at the layout level will create all kinds of structural and conversion problems.

You have to have a clean, organized, well-structured layout file to get any further than that local-print output. And that's the way it should be, and, s'truth, was the way it was ten years ago... there were just still some shortcuts and safety nets for sloppy methods. Those are gone now, not just at the ID level, but out at the reader/buyer level.

—

[Dan Greyhound]

I use styles where they make sense to use them. I just don't see the point of using a style where a return has always worked before. I know people who use Word like to put spaces between every paragraph using styles, but that is incorrect; there shouldn't be extra space between every paragraph. What I'm talking about is an extra line of white between sections or stanzas and nowhere can I find InDesign recommends using paragraph spacing for this. I work with people who design national magazines and no one I've come across adds a space between sections or stanzas using a style, it's too nebulous and likely to be lost. Saying it has always been the correct way to do it and that all professionals do this is just plain wrong. And in what way does using double returns impact the creation of a pdf?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

You're welcome to all your opinions. But I assure you that your notions of how things should be done are decades out of step with how it is done by professionals of the last 15 years.

I'm am beginning to think that all your experience, 'professional magazines' included, might be in the poetry world, which (in my direct experience) really does tend to be decades behind in thinking and processes. But maybe not.

—

[Dan Greyhound]

Okay, I might be out of touch. What are the benefits of replacing double returns to paragraph styles as part of ones workflow?

[BobLevine]

To start with, it's universal. Any paragraph you've applied it to will change if you revise the style. In this case, the spacing would be easy to manage. You could also write your own CSS and apply that rule to only that paragraph style making it even simpler to work with the epub output.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This, too, although I was starting with Step 1. You can have one complete layout/style for print, and wholly override that same document by defining each style differently with CSS for EPUB export. You don't have to have two documents nor put up with how the export wants to iunterpret print styles by default.

But you do have to have a "clean" document with an unmodified style applied to each paragraph, with no spot overrides for text formatting.

But I think that's Step 2, here. 🙂

—

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Styles give you full universal control of those paragraphs from a central point. And styles allow you to do many, many different things that content elements (spaces, tabs, extra return) don't, and with finer gradations of control.

You can almost certainly use Find/Change to do most of this conversion for you. For example, find all repeating paragraph marks and replace them with one, and assign a new style to that paragraph. It's all in the order of changes, and how you define the new styles. That is, you do not have to go through manually and remove extra blank paragraphs, and I'd bet one basic style will work for the vast number of verses/stanzas. You can then go through and tag, say, first verses with a different style to allow different spacing control.

—

[Dan Greyhound]

But all of this just adds more work. If I want to change the leading throughout the book I'd have to change another paragraph style instead of just one. Plus I'd have have to work out what the new spacing worked out at in millimetres. I don't see any advantage. Even Adobe's own templates don't work like this; they use double spaces rather than a new style, so for them to remove this functionality in ebook conversion seems hypocrytical at best

[Dan Greyhound]

*double returns, I mean

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

1. It's more work if you don't set up a document using correct methods in the first place, yes. Fixing a poorly structured document is always a lot of work.
2. It's less work if you use a proper structure and style defintions in the first place, because one change in the style definition changes every paragraph with that style applied, automatically and instantly.
3. Templates are, by and large, a crutch for new and lazy designers, with a small sop to some very busy designers who have to turn out an "okay' result in a hurry. Not all of them are made by first-rate creators and there are certainly shortcuts and bad practice in some you might find.

You are arguing strenuously against something that would solve all your problems and greatly ease your workflow on large projects — and something that is essential to professional work in this field. If you want to keep doing it your way, by all means, do. But if you want a solution to things like the EPUB export problem, and to avoid such problems with future projects, you can't really invent all your own rules. Or, essentially, complain that it's not the way we used to do it on IBM Selectrics.

—

[Dan Greyhound]

No one supplies copy in the way you suggest. There is just no way that going through every document removing double returns and replacing them with a new style is going to 'ease my workflow'. And to what end? The only benefit is so that it works when converted to epub, which I hardly ever do. To suggest that everyone should do something so counterintuitive which is going to raise the risk of errors shows a complete lack of understanding of how the real world operates. What if you accidentaly override your style? You'll have to go back through the hard copy and find all the section/stanza breaks. A double return does a much better job. And how does creating another style in place of one, streamline anything? It adds needless complexity. But the main point is that Adobe's own templates don't even do this yet Adobe have stripped such functionality from epub conversion. Maybe it was necessary for some esoteric behind-the-scenes reason, but don't tell me it's an improvement or that it's the way all professionals now do it because this simply isn't true!

[focksbot]

So coming to this thread nearly a year later, I find it hard to disagree with Dan. HTML still afford you the use of <br/> to create line breaks/spacing at the same height as the enclosing paragraph, and that last time I checked, these work with .epub files created in Calibre? It's unbelievable that InDesign doesn't treat carriage returns as the cue to insert these.

What the rest of you are saying is that every time an editor imports a lineated MS into their InDesign template in order to produce an Ebook they will have to go through and apply their 'extra spacing' style to first line of every stanza. There is no way to 'correctly set up the document' that avoids this busywork.

[jane-e]

---

@Dan Greyhound wrote:

so for them to remove this functionality in ebook conversion seems hypocrytical at best

---

An EPUB is a mini-website with HTML and CSS. When ISOs change their standards, as they have for the web, Adobe has no choice but to write compliant code. 

---

If I want to change the leading throughout the book I'd have to change another paragraph style instead of just one.

---

No, you don't. What you do instead is base one style on another, with the only change being Space After. When you update the parent style, both change. That's the beauty of styles.

---

Plus I'd have have to work out what the new spacing worked out at in millimetres.

---

Your type is measured in points and your spacing should be as well. There are two ways to do this:

• Change your system of measurement to picas. Spacing will be in points.
• Keep your measurement system in millimeters as you prefer.
  Type 14pts or 1p3 or 13 pts into the spacing dialog and let InDesign do the conversion to millimeters for you. InDesign will convert measurements as well as add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

Jane