indd > epub all line breaks (carriage returns) removed

[Dan Greyhound]

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

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Actually, EPUB has changed very little. It's the export that's been slowly brought into compliance, fixing "helpful improvements" that nearly every tool implemented, like the early days of HTML. So shortcuts and sloppy work that used to pass no longer does... but it's not because "functionality has been removed."

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[BobLevine]

I remember arguing with web "designers" that said we'd be using tables to layout websites forever. And...it wasn't really that long ago.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I was thinking (as always in this topic) of that era where no two browsers interpreted any but the most basic code the same way, and had their own subsets of code, so that writing a fairly simple web page that would display correction on most browsers was a huge headache. Then along came the boon of HTML5.

That's much like where EPUB is these days. Too many "extensions" and "fixes" on the creation end, and too many "let's do it this way!" readers. And even the best readers have a bug or two. We really need the boon of EPUB4, but it's nowhere in sight.

But most tools have gotten more compliant, as in not "fixing up" multiple paragraphs etc., which is I think part of what's at play here.

PS... frames!

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[Dan Greyhound]

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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.

But the parent style wouldn't have space after applied, only the dependent style would and that would have to be changed independently because the space after would not change in proportion to the leading. So it isn't easier than just using a double return and one paragraph style appied to both types of text.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I can't follow your logic here at all. I can only assure you that no matter how long it's been done on typewriters and in office Word usage, using two paragraph returns — using any two whitespace characters in a row — is contrary to both the practice of professional typesetting and the way most tools (InDesign either 'included' or 'especially') are designed to produce the best results.

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[Dan Greyhound]

Well, I disagree from my experience it's how everyone does it. Regardless of that, how do you do a space at the top of a page then? Paragraph spacing won't work as there is nothing above it and lowering the frame won't translate to the Kindle version. Plus lowering the frame would be a nightmare if any text is changed and the line endings change so that the space is no longer at the top of a page

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Without trying to sound snarky, you accomplish all these things by knowing how to use the tool for the job. Instead of trying to apply techniques evolved from typed manuscripts and primitive word processors, in page layout applications you use tools and features that simply did not exist in those days.

It's not much of an argument that "everyone you know" uses those techniques. You won't find one person in any modern writing/publishing group or forum who does, much less vehemently defends them. Certainly not at the InDesign user level; I suppose there are still Word etc. users out there who have never gone past using it as an electronic typewriter.

If you want to do better work, easier, with a much more efficient workflow and far less wasted time, mastering the basics of using a tool like ID the way it is supposed to be used — the way all modern publications developers and publishers use it — would be a worthwhile step. If you want to solve the problems you're having, as listed above, it's an essential step.

And this forum exists to answer questions just like the ones you ask above... but it's not going to give you responses on how to do it using your ca.-1970 techniques.

So do you want to succeed at the modern publication (including Kindle, which came along long after 'the typewriter method' stopped being used), or do you want to keep doing it your way?

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[Dan Greyhound]

Well given the standard of your design, if that is an example of the modern way of doing things, I think I'll do it my way! Your cover design for your book you keep promoting is one of the worst cover designs I've ever seen, ha, ha. And I've used InDesign since it took over from PageMaker and published hundreds of books fine doing it my way. So yah boo sucks!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, that ugly book does tell you how to do top spacing in Kindle. But it's not with multiple paragraph returns. Best of luck to you in your continuing career.

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[focksbot]

James -- one thing you don't seem to acknowledge at any point in this discussion is that typesetting involves importing and working with manuscripts that have been sent to you in a variety of formats. An ordinary person putting together a poetry manuscript isn't going to be applying different styles to different lines -- they hit return to create a line break and double-return to create a stanza break. This is what we have to work with, and that's never going to change.

[BobLevine]

Well, your experience is with other people that, quite frankly, also refuse to acknowledge they're doing it wrong. You're free to continue on this path but it appears to me you're unwilling to open your mind to the proper way of doing things. Based on your various responses to the advice that's been offered, I'm not even sure why you're here unless it's to complain.

[Dan Greyhound]

I just don't understand why a method that worked well for decades has been removed and we are all now supposed to do things in a much more complicated, round-about way. Adding a paragraph style with an invisible white line rule hardly seems like a simple, quicker and logical way of creating the exact effect that a double return previously provided. I also note that CMOS are silent on the matter, this rule against double returns apparently hasn't reached them yet either.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Got it: you don't understand. You've repeated that several times.

Perhaps it's because you don't understand anything about how the new processes work, and what they bring to the practice of publication layout and design; in a nutshell, every change you are complaining about has brought vast improvements for every "loss of simplicity" it might have replaced.

Style manuals are almost entirely about language use and content organization. I don't have a one on the shelf that addresses design, layout and typography issues beyond the most simplistic margin and spacing matters for reports, theses and very basic book formats. It's not really an authority in this area.

If you can't be bothered to learn anything newer than about PageMaker's middle versions could handle, complaining repeatedly here and insulting a bunch of very experienced people who are here as volunteers to help other users solve problems and gain knowledge seems like a huge waste of your time, which could be better applied to grinding out more productions using antiquated methods. But maybe that's just me.

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[BobLevine]

Definitely not just you.

[Dan Greyhound]

Yes, you keep talking about the vast improvemnets this change has made, yet haven't been able to list a single one

[BobLevine]

Yes, we have but you just refuse to listen. The proper use of styles allows a single change to flow through the entire document. Again, if you don't want to learn this stuff, that's on you and it's not going to have any negative effect on me. But the next time someone wants a document-wide change you can spend all day and I'll have it done in seconds.

[Dan Greyhound]

*sigh* As before, this is a defence of the use of styles, which I have repeatedly told you I use and like. Try reading what I've actually written

[jane-e]

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@Dan Greyhound wrote:

*sigh* As before, this is a defence of the use of styles, which I have repeatedly told you I use and like. Try reading what I've actually written

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Your original question (I think) was how to keep the extra returns when exporting to epub. The answer is to use spacing, not returns, when you are exporting to epub. The extra returns will be stripped away, but the spacing will remain.

As James pointed out, a second option is to use Shift Return and then you will have an option to keep it when exporting.

https://creativepro.com/paragraph-return/

Jane

[Dan Greyhound]

Thanks, Jane. I missed that one as someone else had said I should use forced line breaks instead of returns after all my paragraph endings which obviously wouldn't work.

[focksbot]

Your original question (I think) was how to keep the extra returns when exporting to epub. The answer is to use spacing, not returns, when you are exporting to epub. The extra returns will be stripped away, but the spacing will remain.

As James pointed out, a second option is to use Shift Return and then you will have an option to keep it when exporting.

Spacing doesn't work with lineated lines because it adds a space after every line instead of every stanza.

Shift-return also doesn't work because lineated lines use hanging indents.

As Dan has observed higher up, the only solution appears to be, absurdly, that the first line of every stanza in a manuscript have a different style applied to it than every subsequent line.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

As noted, we have and you have managed to go (almost literally) NAH NAH NAH NAH CAN'T HEAR YOU NAH NAH NAH over all of them. I have two descriptive words in mind for you at this point, both of which would greatly upset the Adobe powers here and be utterly unprofessional to use. But you certainly haven't established yourself as capable of either serious inquiry or learning.

So I'll be polite one more time — the last time — and answer your petulant questions as you ask them

First — if you don't understand just how much power is locked up in styles, especially the nearly bottomless scope of InDesign paragraph, character, object, table and cell styles, then you have absolutely no idea how much you are missing in terms of doing the basic job you claim to have been grinding away at for a long time, with vastly amplified ease and design/layout power. If those tools are good enough — I can't quite fathom why you persist here. except to complain that the rest of the world moved on for some very, very good reasons.

Second — let's talk about that spacing thing. With your stone-axe paragraph return spacing, you can space things by typewriter lines. If you're really advanced, you can space things and change the spacing returns to a different line-height. With any tool of the modern era, we can top-space paragraphs by tenths of a point (that's a 720th of an inch) to get exact, mathematically-balanced layout spacing. With one setting. That can (and should) be controlled by a style, so that every single Level 3 Head can be adjusted by that micro amount throughout a document.

That's one — one (1) — feature of tools like ID. Multiply by... ten thousand.

Or just keep hitting Return twice and b*tching that the rest of us don't.

/--30-- (Yes, I too go back that far.)

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[Creamer Training]

Wow, what a fun read! This discussion is very entertaining. 

As an aside, adding space with double returns is as wrong in Word as it is in InDesign. It's just that Word has many more office workers using it. 

[BobLevine]

Right...but, if they tried to turn those docs into EPUBs they'd run into the same problems.

[Dan Greyhound]

You keep tilting at your own strawman

[BobLevine]

And you came here under the guise of looking for help but don't really want to do anything but whine. So have at it.