Basic markdown paragraph indent

Thanks everybody. I learned a bunch going through the links and googling some of those terms.

‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ I’ve 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.
‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ 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 ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ which is some kind of Unicode empty space character. It’s not visible in edit or rendered view in a markdown document and it indents just fine. There’s a whole host of empty character types listed on that page that might work if you can wrangle Unicode. I’m doing a bulk of this kind of writing on an iPad and I don’t want to add too many apps or alt keyboards or extra code that might distract me.
‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ This way I get a simple way to indent, it looks clean in either mode and it gets out of my way when I’ve got gold running from my fingertips into the keyboard.

P.S. it also works in this forum text entry.

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:thinking:

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How about …:

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.

This only indents the subsequent paragraphs?
:thinking:

Unless I’m misunderstanding the OP’s initial request, my solution does exactly what is needed.

Yes.

You are right, @SlickSlack did not ask for an unindented first paragraph but that’s how indenting is handled.

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Handled where?

In proper typography. See for example here (okay, it says that the first-line indent of a first paragraph is optional and not downright bad style).

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Definitely subjective.

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) :slight_smile:

@BLUEFROG
That looks like a good solution too.

‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ I don’t know much about how CSS and HTML work and generally don’t want to bog my writing down with anything that stops… (orchestra swells then cuts to total silence)…THE FLOW.
‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ I’m 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 doesn’t support rich text editing natively (I’m probably getting the technical semantics of that wrong).

‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ I’ve 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 that’s not what it is designed for. I like where it is now and while I’ve investigated using Scrivener and iAWriter I don’t 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.
‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ I’ve got two solutions that work for my needs, my empty space character text expansion and @BLUEFROG’s simple style header. Plus I learned a bit about CSS and HTML, against my better judgement 

‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ thanks again for everyone’s help.

You’re welcome!

The beauty of Markdown/plain text is they do let you concentrate on just getting words out. :slight_smile:
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:

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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, I’m not at all calling your experience in question. The vast majority of my reading experience is books in German and there you won’t 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 won’t find any hint of a streak of nationalism, national pride, patriotism, or whatever you like to call it in me—maybe, 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: It’s of course pure coincidence that to conclude this posting of all things I use a screenshot of Donald Barthelmy’s story “Margins” (Sixty Stories, Penguin: 2003) which by the way happens to not have a first-paragraph first-line indent:

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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 – 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 indentation…).

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Haha! No worries and no offense taken. We’re friends in here :slight_smile:

There are indeed instances of both indenting methods. My experiences aren’t the sum total of all known books, for sure.

@chrillek: I hear that! I remember chasing type for old Kluge and Heidelberg windmill presses when I started in print. And old Compugraphic typesetting machines. Ahh… the old days.

I worked on AM and Compugraphics. But frankly I was very happy later on to typeset with a real computer (Atari!) which could interface to a linotype photo typesetter. So much easier to use real software and not this stuff a typesetting company had thrown together. On the computer, you could finally see what you were doing.

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Edit: this is specifically a DTTG question now

Despite my best intentions I am spending some time trying to figure out how to make one CSS style sheet serve as the style sheet for any md docs that point at it. I have a style header that works in a simple md doc (missing open < to avoid forum formatting) -

style type=“text/css”>
p {
text-indent: 2em;
padding: 10px;
border-radius: 10px;
background-color: rgba(200, 100, 0, 0.25);
}

but I can’t figure out how to add a header in a md doc that points at it. I’ve tried all the things in the Fletcher Penny reference linked from the DTTG handbook.

Currently, there is no way to specify a user-defined stylesheet in DEVONthink To Go.

For DEVONthink, you can set a default stylesheet as noted in the post I linked.

Also, check out the Help > Documentation > Documents > Markdown Documents section.

Sorry that I have caused distractions in your thread.

I love and use both DEVONthink and Scrivener but I would never try to talk anyone who has already found their tool already into using both (or any) of them. There is no one right solution for everyone and the numerous options one has in software nowadays might get distracting in its own way.

Markdown in DEVONthink is a generally good idea. Because if you ever find a use for Scrivener when it comes to finalizing your manuscript you could easily transfer your Markdown content into it. Including structures and footnotes. While the latter would not work in rich text notes because Apple did not implement them.

And now: soccer.

Edit: the following should work in DT and DTTG.
You might consider setting up a md template that contains the appropriate style settings for your case.
Either you have an external stylesheet (no <style> tags!). Than you can include it in your MD file with a style element that references it. Or some kind of md magic at the top of the file (that’s mentioned in the DT manual, I think).

Or you have an internal style (included in style tags) like you posted. That you have to add verbatim too the top of your md file.

If I’ve learnt anything in therapy it’s that distractions come from within. No apology needed.

But I think you can point to a style sheet like discussed here. [markdown-style-sheet-for-dttg] (Markdown style sheet for DTTG - #4 by chrillek)

This was the piece of information I was missing. It works!

Of course :+1:
A CSS stylesheet never contains the style tags, because it is a completely different (from HTML) language. Tags belong to HTML.

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