Re: [libreoffice-users] anyone knows how to find/replace not-printable glyphs?

Tim---Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote:
> I have a problem with a old book text file.  There are 3 or more lines
> between paragraphs.  I want to reduce them down to only one.
>
> When I turned the option to view non-printed characters, I get the
> "PI-ish" looking symbol - ¶ - that is at the end of every paragraph.
> Each extra line has that symbol as its first character.  The character
> listed in the last line of this text looks like the non-printing
> character, but must be different from it, since it gives a "no match
> found" error when using it.

It's just represented like that when showing non-printing characters; 
it's not actually inserted as that character (which is itself a 
printable character).

> So, is there a way to use that end of paragraph symbol/character to look
> for three in a row and replace it with only two?  Since some of the
> paragraphs have more than 3 extra lines between paragraphs, I could run
> that find/replace several times.  All I want to show is the symbol at
> the end of the paragraph and the one between paragraphs.  Since there
> are at least 300 pages to the book - in text format - it would not be
> practicable to do this manually.

I haven't been able to easily find a way to search for consecutive 
paragraph breaks. However, you can find empty paragraphs by searching 
for "^$" (without the quotes), and ticking "Regular expressions" under 
"Other options". Leave "Replace With" blank and click "Replace All", and 
all the empty paragraphs will be removed.

I don't know if that helps, since it will remove all empty paragraphs, 
not just those where there are 3 or more together. Unfortunately 
searching for "$^$^" doesn't seem to work to find 2 consecutive empty 
paragraphs...

Why do you want to leave 2 consecutive paragraph breaks anyway? If it's 
to get the spacing, you should remove the extra blank paragraphs and add 
the spacing by setting the spacing above/below paragraph in the 
paragraph formatting (or even better, in a paragraph style which is 
applied to the appropriate paragraphs).

> Actually, I am trying to fix a bad .epub book.  I found that if I
> convert it to a text file and the convert it back to an e-book format,
> most of the formatting issues go away when viewing it with my tablet's
> .epub readers [Nook and Pocketbook].

Before going too far with the spacing above/below paragraph, you might 
want to check that it actually gets applied when converted into .epub 
format. I'd have thought it should, but you never know.

> So has anyone tried to do something like this, removing blank
> paragraphs, i.e. blank lines between paragraphs, as an automatic
> find/replace option?

--
Mark.


--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted