Document Properties: Text

The Text properties page allows you to set various options that apply to the conversion of preformatted text and plain text files. An example of preformatted text is content marked with the <pre> tag in an HTML file. Examples of plain text files include files with the extension .txt and Palm Doc files.

Preformatted text

By default, preformatted text uses a monospace font and any line break in the source content results in a line break at the same location when the content is displayed. Preformatted text is not intended to be reflowed and the position of line breaks is intended to be as they appear in the source content.

Use a monospace font

Using a monospace font makes it possible to align text along columns and to create tabular data (e.g., tables). Most preformatted text is designed to be displayed using a monospace font as opposed to a proportional font. Uncheck the Use a monospace font checkbox if you do not want the preformatted text to display with a monospace font.

Single line breaks

For preformatted text, set the Single line breaks option to one of the following to specify how to process single line breaks:

Keep all: Leave all single line breaks as they appear in the preformatted text.
Remove all: Remove all single line breaks from the preformatted text.
Keep if a space or tab character follows: Remove all single line breaks except those where the next line begins with a space or tab character.

Some text files are formatted with a given screen size in mind, such as an 80 column wide screen and line breaks occur on each line before column 80. When such a file is displayed on a narrower screen, the reader needs to scroll horizontally to read the part of the line that is wider than the screen. Moreover, if the application that displays the content does not have the ability to provide horizontal scrolling, the text will likely look like it is ill-formatted. As an example, consider the following block of text formatted for a 60 column screen:

Some text files are formatted with a given screen size in
mind, such as an 80 column wide screen and line breaks
occur on each line before column 80.

When such a file is displayed on a narrower screen, the
reader needs to scroll horizontally to read the part of the
line that is wider than the screen.

When the content is displayed on a 40 column wide screen with no horizontal scrolling, the output may look like this:

Some text files are formatted with a
given screen size in
mind, such as an 80 column wide screen
and line breaks
occur on each line before column 80.

When such a file is displayed on a
narrower screen, the
reader needs to scroll horizontally to
read the part of the
line that is wider than the screen.

Oftentimes, in such files, paragraphs will be double-spaced with respect to one another. In this case, you can set the Single line breaks option to Remove all and iSiloX will replace the single line breaks within a paragraph to spaces so that the document can be reflowed evenly for a screen of any width. The above example would then look like this on a 40 column wide screen:

Some text files are formatted with a
given screen size in mind, such as an
80 column wide screen and line breaks
occur on each line before column 80.

When such a file is displayed on a
narrower screen, the reader needs to
scroll horizontally to read the part of
the line that is wider than the screen.

In the case where preformatted text does not have double-spacing between paragraphs as in the previous example but instead uses indentation as in the below example, then the Remove all option would not be appropriate.

    Some text files are formatted with a given screen size
in mind, such as an 80 column wide screen and line breaks
occur on each line before column 80.
    When such a file is displayed on a narrower screen, the
reader needs to scroll horizontally to read the part of the
line that is wider than the screen.

Instead, use Keep if a space or tab character follows option for such cases for the following result on a 40 column wide screen:

    Some text files are formatted with
a given screen size in mind, such as an
80 column wide screen and line breaks
occur on each line before column 80.
    When such a file is displayed on a
narrower screen, the reader needs to
scroll horizontally to read the part of
the line that is wider than the screen.

Plain text files

While iSiloX converts a text file, it processes the content in one or more ways.

Line breaks

The iSilo™ document format uses linefeed characters (ASCII 10) to indicate line breaks. If the Process line breaks checkbox is checked, which is recommended, iSiloX correctly converts line breaks in text files that utilize either carriage return characters (ASCII 13) alone as line breaks or carriage return and linefeed characters in pairs as line breaks. If you uncheck this option, the resulting document may display incorrectly.

Removing single line breaks

Some text files are formatted with a given screen size in
mind, such as an 80 column wide screen and line breaks
occur on each line before column 80.

When such a file is displayed on a narrower screen, the
reader needs to scroll horizontally to read the part of the
line that is wider than the screen.

When the content is displayed on a 40 column wide screen with no horizontal scrolling, the output may look like this:

Some text files are formatted with a
given screen size in
mind, such as an 80 column wide screen
and line breaks
occur on each line before column 80.

When such a file is displayed on a
narrower screen, the
reader needs to scroll horizontally to
read the part of the
line that is wider than the screen.

Oftentimes, in such files, paragraphs will be double-spaced with respect to one another. In this case, you can check the Convert single line breaks to single spaces checkbox and iSiloX will replace the single line breaks within a paragraph to spaces so that the document can be reflowed evenly for a screen of any width. The above example would then look like this on a 40 column wide screen:

Some text files are formatted with a
given screen size in mind, such as an
80 column wide screen and line breaks
occur on each line before column 80.

When such a file is displayed on a
narrower screen, the reader needs to
scroll horizontally to read the part of
the line that is wider than the screen.

Tab stops

Within text files, tab characters are often used to align text. You can set the Tab stop width to the value for which the text file was written.

Preformatting and using a monospace font

If a text file is preformatted, it means that the content should not be reflowed and that the position of line breaks should not be modified. Performing either of these operations may mess up the original desired appearance of the content. In this case, you want to check the Preformatted checkbox so that iSiloX honors the preformatting.

Furthermore, the text file may have been designed to be displayed using a monospace font as opposed to a proportional font. Using a monospace font makes it possible to align text along columns and to create tabular data (e.g., tables). Check the Use monospace font with size: checkbox and specify a desired font size for this.