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

On 03/15/2016 05:32 PM, libreoffice-ml.mbourne@spamgourmet.com wrote:
> 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?

Here is a link to a part of the screen-clip of a typical problem.
http://libreoffice-na.us/holding/paragraph-break.jpg

This shows the problem with the text file.  The .epub had even more 
problems like it seemed that after every sentence would appear to have a 
"carriage-return and/or line-feed - plus it seemed to be doubled space.

That ¶ symbol is shown in blue and some of the text has one breaking up 
the middle of the sentence between paragraphs even though it was not 
needed for a page break.  Some times there 3 of these symbols between 
the paragraphs, and other times there are 4 symbols.

I can read the book in a text file, but it would be better as an .epub 
file.  The conversion is done by Calibre, first to the text file, then 
back from there.  To be honest, I really start using that package to 
convert PDF book files to an e-book so I can read it in a larger font 
than having the original PDF file viewed on my 10 inch tablet.  Then I 
started to use it for my free book collection and other conversion needs.





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