Eliminating Blank Lines Between Paragraphs

[Hook]

Is there any way to do this?

I have an editor on a non-standard device that puts a blank line between paragraphs and has no option for the user to change that. If I paste the text into a plain text editor, it ignores the blank lines and then I can copy and past it into Textmaker. But Textmaker leaves the blank lines if I don't do the plain text editor step first.

Is there any way to get Textmaker to ignore the blank lines when I paste the text? If not, could that be programmed as a Paste special option?

If you are curious, I am using the Remarkable 2 tablet which, oddly, although it is running a version of Linux (but it's only available to the user by essentially jailbreaking it), does not handle text format, only PDF and eBook. I can send the documents I create as text in an email or I can copy and paste from a PDF, but it always places a blank line between paragraphs.

None of this is a shortcoming of Textmaker and likely the feature I'm asking for is not in high demand, so I'll understand if it isn't possible. I have made a feature request of the ReMarkable folks, of course.

Thanks for your time,

[Woody44]

Do you run TextMaker with reveal codes activated? (Meaning you can see the paragraph symbols -- ¶ -- at the end of each paragraph.)

If so, is there a paragraph symbol in each of the blank lines? That would mean that the ReMarkable app is adding paragraph breaks unnecessarily. I'm not sure how to address that.

However, if there is NOT a paragraph symbol, that would mean the app is adding space before or after each paragraph. You may be able to get rid of the unwanted space by editing the paragraph style to specify zero space before and zero space after.

Have you tried pasting the text into TextMaker using the option for "Paste Special" > "Unformatted Text"? When you do that, the pasted text will assume the formatting in effect at the point of insertion. If you paste into a blank paragraph set for "Normal" and configured to have no space before or after, that may solve your issue.

[Woody44]

P.S. If this tablet runs Linux, can you install SoftMaker Office for Linux on it?

[Hook]

Hi, Woody, thanks for the replies.

Yes, there is a paragraph symbol at the front of the blank lines. So, the Remarkable is essentially coding enter as CR/LF. I agree, completely unnecessarily. I have made a request that they provide a way to change that. Unfortunately, Textmaker doesn't act like a text editor and even pasting unformatted text doesn't get rid of the line between paragraphs. I suspect it is because the Remarkable 2 tablet is really aimed at business note taking and memos and not specifically writers-- unindented single space paragraphs separated by blank lines is pretty common business memo format. The extra step of pasting first into a plain text editor isn't awful, but it is annoying. Still, the other things this tablet does are valuable enough that I can just learn to live with it. The handwriting recognition on the platform is truly amazing.

And, yes, it is Linux, but the user is given no easy access to it from the UI. The Remarkable company provides all the GPL information and a user name and password for ssh access, but don't support doing so. I will get around to it one of these days, I'm sure. I doubt I can install SMO, but I'd settle for Nano in a terminal.

[Woody44]

So, the Remarkable is essentially coding enter as CR/LF.

No, ReMarkable is coding [ENTER] as TWO CR/LFs.

If the extra line breaks are coded into the file, there's no way TextMaker or any word processor can automatically remove the extra line breaks upon pasting.

But you can just use find and replace to search for all instances of two consecutive line breaks, and replace with a single line break.

[Hook]

But you can just use find and replace to search for all instances of two consecutive line breaks, and replace with a single line break.

I can't figure out how to get search and replace to do that, but it probably doesn't matter. It's probably just as easy to paste into a text editor first, which ignores the extra line break.

Since, in the business world I operated in before I retired, report format was single spaced lines, no indent, paragraphs demarked by a blank space, it would be nice if there was a way to allow conversion of that format to double spaced, indent, no blank line between paragraphs. Seems like it wouldn't be too hard, but that's easy to say seeing as how I'm not a coder.

[Jossi]

Re search and replace: Go to Edit > Replace... In the dialog box, click Special > Paragraph mark twice for the search field and once for the Replace field. Click "Replace all" and there you are. I think this is easier than using an additional text editor.

[Woody44]

Re search and replace: Go to Edit > Replace... In the dialog box, click Special > Paragraph mark twice for the search field and once for the Replace field. Click "Replace all" and there you are. I think this is easier than using an additional text editor.

Yes, that's the procedure I used when I tested to see if/how it could be done.

Since, in the business world I operated in before I retired, report format was single spaced lines, no indent, paragraphs demarked by a blank space, it would be nice if there was a way to allow conversion of that format to double spaced, indent, no blank line between paragraphs. Seems like it wouldn't be too hard, but that's easy to say seeing as how I'm not a coder.

No coding necessary. Learn to use paragraph styles, and use "Paste Special > Unformatted Text" rather than "Paste."

[Hook]

Re search and replace: Go to Edit > Replace... In the dialog box, click Special > Paragraph mark twice for the search field and once for the Replace field. Click "Replace all" and there you are. I think this is easier than using an additional text editor.

Thank you, that works very nicely. On a quick try of this, it didn't work because I forgot one minor detail... to check the "Start from top" box. Lol. Thank you so much, this gives me what I need.

[Hook]

No coding necessary. Learn to use paragraph styles, and use "Paste Special > Unformatted Text" rather than "Paste."

Spare me the useless condescension and I'll spare you a lecture on properly reading my previous post where I clearly stated that pasting "Unformatted text" did not remove the extra blank lines. I very rarely use "Paste."

[Woody44]

No condescension intended. I saw that you mentioned using "Paste Unformatted" but you didn't say whether or not you are pasting into a custom style rather than the default "Normal" style. Since paste unformatted sets the imported text to the style of the paragraph into which it's pasted, using styles can provide a lot of flexibility when pasting.

[Hook]

To close the circle on this, although the search and replace solution worked well enough (although I couldn't use replace all since I do often use blank lines between sections), I found an undocumented solution on the ReMarkable itself. It turns out there is a short cut (which in fact Textmaker also has and probably other editors have) which, in 40 years of using word processing software (Easy Writer, Kedit, Wordperfect, Word, Textmaker) I never knew about and never had a need for. Lol.

If I hit Shift-Enter on the ReMarkable,the cursor simply drops to the beginning of the next line, No extra space. It still puts te paragraph marker at the end of the previous line, but not on the new line. It's perfect. Now I can draft on the Remarkable, send to email, copy and paste into my Textmaker stylesheet as unformatted text and Bob's my Uncle.

BTW, In Textmaker, if I use the Shift-Enter it does the same thing... leaves a paragraph marker, and drops down one line, ignoring the style sheet which is set for double spacing with first line of paragraph indented. As I said, I've never had a need to "ignore the style sheet" before, but on the ReMarkable it has now made my life much wasier.

I did have to train myself on using Shift=Enter instead of Enter, but it didn't take long. And when I said this is undocumented on the ReMarkable, that includes an email conversation with ReMarkable's support asking if there was a way around having blank lines inserted between paragraphs,

Anyway, this now officially has nothing to do with Textmaker, but I am happy to have solved my problem, However, thanks again @Jossi, your suggestion was a good workaround.

[martin-k]

In TextMaker Shift+Enter does not create paragraphs but inserts a line break in a paragraph. It should not be used generally as a replacement for Return, since (a) paragraphs are limited to around 65000 characters and (b) if you ever apply paragraph formatting, you will apply it to the whole document (your 1-paragraph document) instead.

[Hook]

In TextMaker Shift+Enter does not create paragraphs but inserts a line break in a paragraph. It should not be used generally as a replacement for Return, since (a) paragraphs are limited to around 65000 characters and (b) if you ever apply paragraph formatting, you will apply it to the whole document (your 1-paragraph document) instead.

Thanks, Martin. I'm not planning on using it. I was just saying that that using it on the Remarkable solves my problem for posting the text in Textmaker. I will always be using Enter in Textmaker. Lol.