BaDToaD
"Very" Old Timer
Some of you may have experienced problems with text formatting in ebooks. I know I have when reading on my Palm (sorry folks preferred ebook reader 
)
There are a few text formatting tools around but by far and away the best is this one here.
It's slightly buggy in that you have to remember to name your file .txt to save as text or .pdb to save as a palm file rather than using the dropdown save as type (well it doesn't work for me anyway) but other than that it's awesome.
The following for example is the standard options. There are also advanced option and more besides.
It's no longer being developed but it's just about perfect anyway
It's a cracking utility that no self respecting ebook fan should be without.
STANDARD OPTIONS
CRLF = Carriage Return and Line Feed, or, ASCII Characters 13 and 10
A proper Blank Line is nothing more than an empty line that contains nothing but a single carriage return character and a single linefeed character. Thus, removing or adding blank lines is doing nothing more than adding or deleting the CRLF character pair at that location.
Remove Blank Lines
Any line with only a CRLF will be deleted. If the line has even one space or tab it will not be deleted. To clear all undisplayable characters from a blank line, use the Left Justify and the Convert Tabs options before running Remove Blank Line option.
Remove Extra Blank Lines
All blank lines will be deleted except for those that follow a CRLF. This gives the effect of removing all white space in the document except for the single line following a paragraph. Again, if a particular line does not get deleted, it probably has a space or tab imbedded.
Insert Blank Line After Paragraph
This actually inserts another CRLF after each existing CRLF. If the parsed result is double spaced then you have a document with a CRLF after every visible line. You need to parse the document to get the paragraphs delimited, then use this option. This function is very useful for documents to be read on a handheld reader where only a portion of any paragraph can be seen at one time.
Insert Blank Line Before Any Indention
Sometimes you will get a document in which the only formatting is paragraph indentions. This routine will allow you to inject some proper formatting.
Left Justify
This will remove any jagged edges to the left edge of the text. More importantly, it will convert a line with nothing but spaces to a line with a single CRLF. It will not justify a line with a tab character and before using this option, you need to have the paragraphs properly delineated with CRLFs.
Trim Trailing Spaces
Some documents have the end of each line padded with spaces out to a fixed right margin. If the Remove CRLF options is used, these spaces show up as huge voids in the text. This option will remove all spaces, but one, to the right of each line. Then the lines can be joined with the Remove CRLF function.
Trim All Trailing Spaces
This will remove ALL trailing spaces.
Indent Paragraph to "n" Spaces
Assuming that the document has been parsed to having a CRLF after every paragraph, this will add "n" number of spaces to the start of the paragraph, giving a paragraph indention.
The value of "n" spaces is determined by the number in the Space Value box.
Convert Tabs to "n" Spaces
Because tab values are dependent on the reading software, it is easier to parse a document if they are converted to spaces. This will replace each tab character with the spaces using the number in the Space Value Value box.
Remove All CRLFs (except Paragraph end)
Before using this option, you must have your paragraphs delineated with indentions or blank lines. This will join all intra paragraph lines into a proper paragraph.
Remove Hyphenated Line End
This is handy for scanned text that uses hyphenated word breaks. The "-"will be removed in preparation for joining the lines by removing the CRLFs.
Delete Lines with only Numeric
Occasionally used to remove the page numbers from a scanned document. Note that if you are parsing a Math or Engineering document, you probably do not want to use this function.
Put Blank Line if Indention is exactly "n" Spaces
Any line with exactly the number of preceding spaces as specified in the Space Value box will have a blank line inserted before it.
Put Blank Line if line length is "n" characters less than Average
This is a last ditch option for text that has no formatting at all, but which has shorter lines at the end of most paragraphs. This routine only works on a document with a CRLF after every visible line. It will find the average length of all the lines and put a blank line after any line that is Space Value or more less than the average length. Example, a text has an average line length of 55 characters. Any line less than 55 minus Space Value (say, 50) will be considered to be the end of the paragraph. This routine usually either works great or not at all.
Show CRLFs
This is to allow a visual indication of the distribution of line feeds and carriage returns in a document. It is usually used after a text file refuses to cooperate in being made readable. In Version 4, these line feed and carriage return indicators are not really in the text and you may continue parsing without worrying about removing them. However, if you Save Viewer at this point, they will be inserted into the text file.
)There are a few text formatting tools around but by far and away the best is this one here.
It's slightly buggy in that you have to remember to name your file .txt to save as text or .pdb to save as a palm file rather than using the dropdown save as type (well it doesn't work for me anyway
) but other than that it's awesome.The following for example is the standard options. There are also advanced option and more besides.
It's no longer being developed but it's just about perfect anyway
It's a cracking utility that no self respecting ebook fan should be without.
STANDARD OPTIONS
CRLF = Carriage Return and Line Feed, or, ASCII Characters 13 and 10
A proper Blank Line is nothing more than an empty line that contains nothing but a single carriage return character and a single linefeed character. Thus, removing or adding blank lines is doing nothing more than adding or deleting the CRLF character pair at that location.
Remove Blank Lines
Any line with only a CRLF will be deleted. If the line has even one space or tab it will not be deleted. To clear all undisplayable characters from a blank line, use the Left Justify and the Convert Tabs options before running Remove Blank Line option.
Remove Extra Blank Lines
All blank lines will be deleted except for those that follow a CRLF. This gives the effect of removing all white space in the document except for the single line following a paragraph. Again, if a particular line does not get deleted, it probably has a space or tab imbedded.
Insert Blank Line After Paragraph
This actually inserts another CRLF after each existing CRLF. If the parsed result is double spaced then you have a document with a CRLF after every visible line. You need to parse the document to get the paragraphs delimited, then use this option. This function is very useful for documents to be read on a handheld reader where only a portion of any paragraph can be seen at one time.
Insert Blank Line Before Any Indention
Sometimes you will get a document in which the only formatting is paragraph indentions. This routine will allow you to inject some proper formatting.
Left Justify
This will remove any jagged edges to the left edge of the text. More importantly, it will convert a line with nothing but spaces to a line with a single CRLF. It will not justify a line with a tab character and before using this option, you need to have the paragraphs properly delineated with CRLFs.
Trim Trailing Spaces
Some documents have the end of each line padded with spaces out to a fixed right margin. If the Remove CRLF options is used, these spaces show up as huge voids in the text. This option will remove all spaces, but one, to the right of each line. Then the lines can be joined with the Remove CRLF function.
Trim All Trailing Spaces
This will remove ALL trailing spaces.
Indent Paragraph to "n" Spaces
Assuming that the document has been parsed to having a CRLF after every paragraph, this will add "n" number of spaces to the start of the paragraph, giving a paragraph indention.
The value of "n" spaces is determined by the number in the Space Value box.
Convert Tabs to "n" Spaces
Because tab values are dependent on the reading software, it is easier to parse a document if they are converted to spaces. This will replace each tab character with the spaces using the number in the Space Value Value box.
Remove All CRLFs (except Paragraph end)
Before using this option, you must have your paragraphs delineated with indentions or blank lines. This will join all intra paragraph lines into a proper paragraph.
Remove Hyphenated Line End
This is handy for scanned text that uses hyphenated word breaks. The "-"will be removed in preparation for joining the lines by removing the CRLFs.
Delete Lines with only Numeric
Occasionally used to remove the page numbers from a scanned document. Note that if you are parsing a Math or Engineering document, you probably do not want to use this function.
Put Blank Line if Indention is exactly "n" Spaces
Any line with exactly the number of preceding spaces as specified in the Space Value box will have a blank line inserted before it.
Put Blank Line if line length is "n" characters less than Average
This is a last ditch option for text that has no formatting at all, but which has shorter lines at the end of most paragraphs. This routine only works on a document with a CRLF after every visible line. It will find the average length of all the lines and put a blank line after any line that is Space Value or more less than the average length. Example, a text has an average line length of 55 characters. Any line less than 55 minus Space Value (say, 50) will be considered to be the end of the paragraph. This routine usually either works great or not at all.
Show CRLFs
This is to allow a visual indication of the distribution of line feeds and carriage returns in a document. It is usually used after a text file refuses to cooperate in being made readable. In Version 4, these line feed and carriage return indicators are not really in the text and you may continue parsing without worrying about removing them. However, if you Save Viewer at this point, they will be inserted into the text file.
