tl:dr How does one indent paragraphs in DTTG markdown?
For a number of reasons I have researched the various writing and outlining apps that work with DEVONThink and I have decided to do all my writing for the next stage completely in DT in markdown. I donβt have to track citations or footnotes (yet!) and I am at the stage where I just want to dump in all the words, quickly into a document and sort it out later. I do most of my writing on an iPad then sort it all out, edit and organize on a MacBookPro (and sometimes an iPhone)
I have looked at the Markdown cheat sheets and I need very little of the fancy stuff, maybe a heading or two and the TOC could probably come in handy.
I do have one question that seems so simple but I can not solve. I find that indenting paragraphs makes large blocks of text easier to read and I canβt figure out how to indent in markdown on DTTG. At least in DTTG, two hard returns defines a paragraph, but adding spaces at the beginning of the line doesnβt show up in the rendered view. A βTabβ at the beginning changes the size and font of the paragraph but I donβt know why. I can t find a reference to Tab in the markdown cheat sheets that I was referencing.
Of course it can be. Though itβs not clear what you mean by indenting: indent the whole paragraph or just the first line of each paragraph.
The first can be achieved by setting a margin or padding on the p element in your CSS.
For the second, use the text-indent property: text-indent | CSS-Tricks - CSS-Tricks
This is not a very good idea. Firstly, span is not a block element. So putting one after the other will run them together on the same line in HTML.
Secondly, CSS has been invented to separate representation from content. Running both of them together again makes modifying appearance a lot more cumbersome then necessary.
Third, there is a CSS solution (see my other post) for this.
Fourth, using px as a dimension for anything like indentation, font size, margins etc. is a bad idea. Px is different in almost every device. And a 40px indentation looks huge for a 8px font but ridiculously small for a 60 px one.
Use relative units like em, rem etc.
I simply copied what I found here and didnβt think about it (even if I would have thought about if I wouldnβt have recognized all those failures without looking things up, so thanks!)
Thanks everybody. I learned a bunch going through the links and googling some of those terms.
ββββ ββββ ββββ βββ ββββββ ββββ ββββ βββ Iβve also learned that the thing I was aiming for is an archaic form of layout, at least by web standards. That is, indenting the first line only of a paragraph. I find it makes large blocks of text more readable and navigate-able.
ββββ ββββ ββββ βββ ββββββ ββββ ββββ βββ One of the pages I read sent me here emptycharacter.com and I was able to make an iOS text replacement of 6 characters of ββββ ββββ ββββ βββ ββββββ ββββ ββββ βββ which is some kind of Unicode empty space character. Itβs not visible in edit or rendered view in a markdown document and it indents just fine. Thereβs a whole host of empty character types listed on that page that might work if you can wrangle Unicode. Iβm doing a bulk of this kind of writing on an iPad and I donβt want to add too many apps or alt keyboards or extra code that might distract me.
ββββ ββββ ββββ βββ ββββββ ββββ ββββ βββ This way I get a simple way to indent, it looks clean in either mode and it gets out of my way when Iβve got gold running from my fingertips into the keyboard.
p {
text-indent: 0em;
}
p + p {
text-indent: 1em;
}
By these styles you can define every first paragraph independent from the subsequent ones. For example you could add a margin-top to the first paragraph but not to the subsequent ones. As the former affects the latter you would have to set their margin-top to 0.
You will have to check out lists and define styles for them because they get affected by these paragraph settings.
I worked in graphic arts and printing for 32+ years and first paragraph indenting is far more common in my experience (including plenty of book printing)
ββββ ββββ ββββ βββ ββββββ ββββ ββββ βββ I donβt know much about how CSS and HTML work and generally donβt want to bog my writing down with anything that stopsβ¦ (orchestra swells then cuts to total silence)β¦THE FLOW.
ββββ ββββ ββββ βββ ββββββ ββββ ββββ βββ Iβm only just figuring out that writing in markdown works well for me on iOS and I can wean myself off of thinking that basic text editing like the MacOS Text Edit or BBEdit is the simplest way to go. Especially as it is repeatedly stated on this forum that iOS doesnβt support rich text editing natively (Iβm probably getting the technical semantics of that wrong).
ββββ ββββ ββββ βββ ββββββ ββββ ββββ βββ Iβve read a lot on this forum from people pushing for full screen writing modes and full fledged editors in DT and DTTG and the pushback from others saying thatβs not what it is designed for. I like where it is now and while Iβve investigated using Scrivener and iAWriter I donβt want to complicate my workflow and put anything between me and writing. Especially when I really really REALLY have to force myself to ignore all possible distractions.
ββββ ββββ ββββ βββ ββββββ ββββ ββββ βββ Iβve got two solutions that work for my needs, my empty space character text expansion and @BLUEFROGβs simple style header. Plus I learned a bit about CSS and HTML, against my better judgement ξ
ββββ ββββ ββββ βββ ββββββ ββββ ββββ βββ thanks again for everyoneβs help.
The beauty of Markdown/plain text is they do let you concentrate on just getting words out.
And if you want to pretty it up, even something simple like setting a font or a color is fairly simple CSS-wise.
Incidentally⦠a previous post of mine that may be of interest:
Interesting. I have never worked in the printing industry but I have read quite a number of books and magazines over the course of something-something decades and in my experience almost always first-paragraph first-line indents come with uncomfortable to read line-spacings, abominable margins, wrong quotation marks, &c. Meaning they are a result of amateurish typography.
But please do take no offence, Iβm not at all calling your experience in question. The vast majority of my reading experience is books in German and there you wonβt find first-paragraph first-line indents very often. On the other hand the sample books in English I just checked sometimes have them and sometimes not. So I falsely generalized.
PS: On just another hand (who the hell does this third hand belong to?) Gutenberg was German. While I can assure you that you wonβt find any hint of a streak of nationalism, national pride, patriotism, or whatever you like to call it in meβmaybe, just maybe it is worth a thought not to ever tinkle with the recipes of German typography. (And beer, as some might want to add.)
PPS: Itβs of course pure coincidence that to conclude this posting of all things I use a screenshot of Donald Barthelmyβs story βMarginsβ (Sixty Stories, Penguin: 2003) which by the way happens to not have a first-paragraph first-line indent:
And then again these rules are dependent on region and personal preferences. When I was working in the typesetting business some 40 years ago, first paragraphs (ie at the beginning of text, after a headline etc) where not indented, only subsequent ones (by one em or less β never more). That was for newspapers in Germany. Books are different, of course.
Regardless, using css is a lot better then adding fixed spaces by hand. Also, because it allows for easy modification (all paragraphs, only the first one, amount of indentationβ¦).
