Soft Hyphen

lhuxley · 03-23-2015, 02:14 AM

I am converting a rather ancient book to ebook format using Calibre. I would like to preserve the hypens in the text for historical reasons. I'd also like the text to reflow normally. The obvious choice would be to replace the original hyphens with soft hyphens. However soft hyphens are invisible in the main editor window.

Is there any way to make soft hyphens visible? I've tried changing the font but that doesn't work.

arspr · 03-23-2015, 02:38 AM

Nope...

The only way would be Search and Replace by a character placeholder which you were sure it's not used in your text.

Somewhere I made a suggestion about using something like a "white-list" of named entities in order to help handle situations like this. Calibre encourages the use of Unicode characters instead of named entities. But the problem appears with invisible ones. Maybe a customizable list could be used so with certain chars Calibre worked the opposite way. But maybe it's too much coding effort.

kovidgoyal · 03-23-2015, 02:56 AM

Use a placeholder like ||

When you are done, editing simply search and replace all occurrences.

lhuxley · 03-23-2015, 08:02 PM

Thanks Kovid,

I was looking for something that I could leave in the file. But your suggestion will work just fine.

03-23-2015, 02:14 AM	#1
lhuxley Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2015 Device: various	Soft Hyphen I am converting a rather ancient book to ebook format using Calibre. I would like to preserve the hypens in the text for historical reasons. I'd also like the text to reflow normally. The obvious choice would be to replace the original hyphens with soft hyphens. However soft hyphens are invisible in the main editor window. Is there any way to make soft hyphens visible? I've tried changing the font but that doesn't work.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Soft hyphen	Kumabjorn	Writers' Corner	32	07-13-2014 12:00 AM
suspended hyphen constructs	cybmole	Writers' Corner	7	01-11-2014 01:57 AM
Soft Hyphens	wallcraft	Workshop	29	06-12-2012 04:21 AM
hyphen + trailing space in retail mobi text	cybmole	Kindle Formats	5	02-03-2012 09:20 AM
Non-Breaking Hyphen	DTM	Sigil	11	08-20-2010 01:09 PM

03-23-2015, 02:38 AM	#2
arspr Dead account. Bye Posts: 587 Karma: 668244 Join Date: Mar 2011 Device: none	Nope... The only way would be Search and Replace by a character placeholder which you were sure it's not used in your text. Somewhere I made a suggestion about using something like a "white-list" of named entities in order to help handle situations like this. Calibre encourages the use of Unicode characters instead of named entities. But the problem appears with invisible ones. Maybe a customizable list could be used so with certain chars Calibre worked the opposite way. But maybe it's too much coding effort.

03-23-2015, 02:56 AM	#3
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 44,017 Karma: 22669822 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Use a placeholder like \|\| When you are done, editing simply search and replace all occurrences.

03-23-2015, 08:02 PM	#4
lhuxley Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2015 Device: various	Thanks Kovid, I was looking for something that I could leave in the file. But your suggestion will work just fine.

Advert