Hi Cindy,
Feel free to leave the books formatting of paragraphs alone. If the
original file starts with paragraphs indented, try to follow that pattern.
If they have a blank line between them, stick with that. Basically what
you've been doing.
The reasoning is this. A DAISY player will decide how to render paragraphs.
The BookShare tool will put paragraph tags around the correct areas and
that'll tell the DAISY interpreter what paragraph is which and it will
display accordingly. During the conversion to Braille the translator should
automatically remove those extra lines, at least in my experience.
So don't worry about changing the format globally, as that of course can
have bad intensions too, like deleting the lines around page numbers which
we don't want.
One less thing to worry about makes for a good Monday right? *grin*
Thank you, Evan. That is indeed what I said, and I'm glad for your correction. It was quite some time ago that I asked how readers preferred that paragraphs be done. I could have forgotten which group said what--but now that you've told me that spaced lines between paragraphs is more difficult for braille readers, and I'm sure it doesn't matter to Daisy readers, I won't use them--and I guess I'll change them to indented paragraphs if I find them in a book I download for validation. It shouldn't be too difficult by using a global replace. I do that with Marissa's List to eliminate the spacing.
Cindy
--- Evan Reese <mentat1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that Braille readers have said that they prefer blank lines between paragraphs? If so, then I would just say that I am *definitely* not one of them. I have been reading Braille books for decades, and it just doesn't feel natural to me to have blank lines between paragraphs. Now that I read books on a Braille display, I don't like them for an additional reason: I have to scroll past a blank line after each paragraph. I just don't see the point, not to mention the extra button push or scroll click needed, which adds up to thousands for each book. My OpenBook puts blank lines between paragraphs when I save in .rtf format, and the first thing I do - thanks to Jake's helpful information - is eliminate them in Word.
If you didn't actually say that most Braille readers prefer blank lines between paragraphs, then I'm sorry for wasting your time, but as it is worded, it seems a bit ambiguous.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Cindy" <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 11:21 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: paragraph spacing
> Sarah, > > Thank you for the information. We can now validate and > upload txt files as rtf--one of the major improvements > bookshare has made. > > I do use Word, and have figured out out to set the > indentations of paragraphs in the document as a whole, > but how would I set it for skipping lines between > paragraphs? Where would I find that? Not that I want > to any more, after your explanation of what happens to > the skipped lines--although Braille readers were the > ones, as I recall, who said they preferred that--but I > am curious to know, in case I do want to. SOme of the > books I validate already have skipped linesw betwween > paragraphs and then I don't change them, of course. > > Cindy > > > > --- Sarah Van Oosterwijck > <curiousentity@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> It doesn't matter too much how you format >> paragraphs, because most people either read with >> speech or braille, in which case they don't >> experience your formatting, or they can adjust the >> paragraph formatting to suit their needs once they >> download the book from bookshare. What is very >> important is that you let your software do the >> formatting--meaning that you use Word's paragraph >> formatting menu to set how paragraphs are displayed, >> because that will let the conversion software handle >> paragraphs in whatever way makes sense for the >> format used. Besides, that method really is a lot >> easier and faster than manipulating every paragraph >> by hand. >> Really I believe bookshare's software only looks for >> paragraphs, but doesn't actually preserve or care >> about how they were formatted in the original. >> Deciding how to display paragraphs is a matter for >> the software being used by the reader and totally >> depends on the format being used. >> DAISY seems to suppress blank lines for paragraphs, >> HTML double spaces paragraphs, and BRF uses a single >> new line character followed by a two space indent. >> >> The only exception I would give to this rule is for >> TXT files. If you submit the TXT file back to >> bookshare as an RTF everything is fine, but if you >> upload as TXT then paragraphing you have done in >> your Word processor may very well be lost, so double >> returns may be the only way to allow any >> paragraphing to survive the conversion process. >> Unfortunately the hole paragraphing issue with TXT >> files is something I haven't completely figured out, >> so I can't write anything more informative or clear. >> I'd just suggest that you avoid uploading TXT >> files. >> >> Sarah Van Oosterwijck >> Assistive Technology Trainer >> http://home.earthlink.net/~netentity > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to > bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list > of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. > >
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