How to remove fixed line-spacing?

[LucyOne]

I have some books that have a fixed value for line-spacing, e.g. line-height: 1.4em. Is there a way in Calibre to remove those values automatically?

I normally do EPUB to EPUB conversion to remove unwanted styles but fixed line-height remains in the stylesheet.

[gbm]

Originally Posted by LucyOne

I have some books that have a fixed value for line-spacing, e.g. line-height: 1.4em. Is there a way in Calibre to remove those values automatically?

I normally do EPUB to EPUB conversion to remove unwanted styles but fixed line-height remains in the stylesheet.

Under look & feel, filter style information--enter line-height--*will remove all line-height values.
see screen shot.
*I would recommend you use the editor to change the line-height's instead.
bernie

[LucyOne]

Thanks a lot, I didn't know about this possibility!

[JSWolf]

Actually, it would be better to use the editor to edit the CSS to remove the line height.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Actually, it would be better to use the editor to edit the CSS to remove the line height.

Much, much better, but that does of course require a knowledge of the way that CSS works. If the OP doesn't currently have that knowledge, it is worth making the effort to acquire it. Changing the appearance of a book by editing the CSS is far more flexible than relying on Calibre's "preset" conversion options.

[cybmole]

On the other hand,if your e reader device has user friendly line height controls, there is little risk in auto stripping all those in the book, which you have to do anyway for Kobo in order to use the reader sliders

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by cybmole

On the other hand,if your e reader device has user friendly line height controls, there is little risk in auto stripping all those in the book, which you have to do anyway for Kobo in order to use the reader sliders

As long as you don't also strip the much more important "margin-top" and "margin-bottom" settings, which control paragraph spacing, that's true. You really don't want to blindly remove all those, because in any decently-formatted book they'll be different for different paragraph styles.

[JSWolf]

All you do is go into the select eBook you want to edit, go into the editor, select the CSS (from the left panel under styles) and find any lines that start with Line-height: and remove them. Then quit (from the file menu) and when the dialog comes up, select Save and Quit. That's it, done. No conversion needed.

[LucyOne]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

All you do is go into the select eBook you want to edit, go into the editor, select the CSS (from the left panel under styles) and find any lines that start with Line-height: and remove them. Then quit (from the file menu) and when the dialog comes up, select Save and Quit. That's it, done. No conversion needed.

I did that with some books but it takes more time than just converting the book.
I read with CoolReader on a Pocketbook Touch Lux 2. I don't want to disable all CSS styles in the book. Usually there's no problem, but especially German publishers prefer fixed line height in Epubs and I can't disable this separately in CoolReader.

[JSWolf]

One way to make removing line-height faster is once you have loaded the eBook into the editor, select the Tools menu and then Remove unused CSS rules. That will remove all unused CSS classes and make the CSS smaller if there are any unused CSS classes. Then you can find and remove all the [B]line-height[/i] lines in the CSS.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Actually, it would be better to use the editor to edit the CSS to remove the line height.

Blanket removal (of anything) is almost always a poor choice (right up there with blanket Applying to every CSS class )

There are a few cases where retaining a line-height might be desired for a cleaner look.

Lines with multiple font sizes (Big or Drop letters, sub/sup, smallcaps)
Line spacing when split with a Br

<h2 class="ch">Chapter <br /> 2</h2>

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

Blanket removal (of anything) is almost always a poor choice (right up there with blanket Applying to every CSS class )

There are a few cases where retaining a line-height might be desired for a cleaner look.

Lines with multiple font sizes (Big or Drop letters, sub/sup, smallcaps)
Line spacing when split with a Br

<h2 class="ch">Chapter <br /> 2</h2>

This is true. One place you do not want to remove the [b]line-height[/i] is when the first letter of a paragraph is larger then the rest of the body text. a [b]line-height[/i] of 0 should be used there to keep the entire line from moving up from the rest of the paragraph.

There could be other places, but not many (IMHO). I've removed most [b]line-height[/i] from the CSS with no detrimental effect.