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Lost my indentations exporting to mobi


mmvoss

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Well it appears I've done something again. Exported to Amazon mobi and I have lost my indentations. Looks good in Storyist. I've used its template for all 70,000 words, but when exported-No indentations. Used my Kindle reader and amazon previewer, both shown no indentations. Any thoughts?

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Do you use tabs to indent your paragraphs? They won't export to ePub or MOBI. You need to use first-line indents (set through the Styles menu) instead. Steve has a video tutorial on creating ePub files (available by clicking on the Support button at www.storyist.com). The process is basically the same for Kindle, except for the part about editing the files after export.

 

There is (or was) a flaw in the Kindle Previewer that caused all paragraphs to appear indented by one space, whatever they were in reality. But you should see the indentations on your Kindle itself if you use first-line indents.

Best,

M

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Hmm. That should work, if you didn't change any of the settings. I tested one of my MOBI files in Kindle for Mac and Kindle Previewer. In both programs the indents were present. They disappeared in Kindle Previewer when I tested on a Kindle Fire (the program added blank lines between each paragraph), and in the iPad version they displayed as a single space. Otherwise they were quite clear, including in the basic Kindle test. You can do that yourself by choosing different devices from the Device menu in Kindle Previewer.

 

If you have a Kindle Fire and the indents are not displaying, that seems to be a problem with Amazon's software, and Amazon has to fix it. If you see the indents in Storyist and you are not pressing tab, then your styles are set correctly. But if you want to check, click anywhere in a paragraph of Section Text and choose Edit Current Style from Styles in the Format menu. You should see 0.500 or 0.250 in the box next to First Line Indent (3rd down on the right, under the text alignment boxes).

Best,

M

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Thanks for your help and patience. The Format box that you describe does say .50 for first line indent. This is what is in the ccs file.that I can find. I can copy it but I can't get into it to change or add to it.

p.toc-1 {

text-indent:0;

text-align: left;

}

 

p.toc-2 {

text-indent:0;

text-align: left;

margin-left: 1 em;

}

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For what it's worth (now that Steve fixed the image upload problem—thanks, Steve!), here are the images I wanted to upload earlier. I created these by opening Storyist's Novel template (where the paragraphs are indented by default) and exporting to Kindle. I was going to upload the MOBI file, too, but the forum objected.

 

You can see that the text is indented on the basic Kindle but not on the Kindle Fire.

 

BTW, Kindle Fire is now the default device in Kindle Previewer.

Best,

M

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Thanks again for your time and energy trying to help this Old guy with this stuff. What you show is what I have been getting. I guess the long and the short of it is, when I actually export my book to Amazon how will it show up ...with or without indented paragraphs.... or does it depend the readers specific device on what that person sees? And there's not much anyone can do about it.

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Again thanks for all the help and time. What Marguerite has posted is what I am getting. I don't think its is just the Kindle previewer that knocks out my paragraphing indents. If I just forget my 70,000 word project for now, and if I don"t use the troublesome template, how can I set up Storyist for my next project for Amazon Kindle that would have indentations for paragraphs.(or a retype of my original project) Please, try to make it simple. I'm new to Storyist and computers.... and yes at times I do miss my typewriter.

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Old Guy:

The point of the pictures is that it IS the Kindle Fire that is not displaying your indents. The Kindle, at least as rendered in the Kindle Previewer and every time I exported a file to my own Kindle (which I loaned to a family member and cannot check at the moment), DOES display the indents, so long as the indents are present in Storyist.

 

The iPad also displays the indents (in both the iPad's own Kindle app and in iBooks, even though they look funny in Kindle Previewer). So does Kindle for Mac.

 

The problem is not with Storyist, so if you just keep using the same template, you will be fine.

As for the help, you're welcome, :)

M

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  • 4 months later...

I know this was old, but I searched to see if anyone else had the same issues.

 

I lose indents on Kindle Fire or on the Mac version. I don't see how it's Amazon's problem if everyone else's books work on those platforms, though. I read a lot on my fire & I've never seen a book that didn't have indented paragraphs. My doc looks fine on my kindle 3.

 

Can I make Storyist work for Fire or computer versions? If I can't use this to create a useable (& if it doesn't format correctly on the most popular kindle, it's not useable) MOBI file, I need to know now so I can do something else.

 

Can anyone please help? I completely don't get CSS or command line stuff but I'll try anything. Thanks!

 

--Denise

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Hi Denise,

 

When Storyist creates a Kindle (mobi) edition, it specifies the default paragraph style for the device. It looks like Amazon changed the default for the Fire from indented to non-indented. You can override the defaults in the CSS file if you want, using something like:

 

 

 

p {
   text-indent: 1em;
   text-align: justify;
}

 

This obviously involves editing the intermediate HTML files, and you'll find info on how to do that in the Editing ePub files post.

 

-Steve

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Thanks Steve! & that won't affect the devices that currently work with the indents? & ETA, are you planning a fix for this? I'll try the CSS stuff, but I have no idea how to do any of that & the directions suggest one ought to know how it works before screwing with it.

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Hi Denise,

 

Thanks for the feature request. Yes, the ability to specify custom formatting in the application is on the list for a future release. Keep in mind, though, that older reading devices have many formatting "quirks" (especially for the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2), so customization comes at a cost of having to test your book on multiple platforms. Paragraph indentation is straight forward, though, and wouldn't be a problem.

 

-Steve

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