How to remove indentations from a book module globally

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ErikJon
Posts: 431
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2012 11:24 pm

How to remove indentations from a book module globally

Post by ErikJon »

Hello, friends.

Anyone using the Guzik Commentary may have already noticed that the indented outline form makes it a little harder to use. The empty spaces produced by the wide indentations diminish the amount of text that can be displayed at one time in any window, requiring the user to scroll left and right, in order to read the text. More than 900 chapter comments have this problem in the Guzik commentary.

Meanwhile, other commentaries that we use in TheWord employ an outline format that uses all the same labels without any of the indentations.

In fact, most of the printed scholarly books that I have from the 1930s and before, followed the practice of using outlines without indentations.

Of course, when dealing with a printed page, or a PDF, the indentations are actually useful, but when using a digital text within a Bible-study program like TheWord, it becomes very cumbersome, as there is not a wide page to deal with, but typically a narrow window with a scroll bar. In fact, when one uses such a module within a smart-phone app like MySword, the narrowness of the text is almost intolerable.

Someone once tried to improve the problem on the TW version of the Guzik commentary by merely reducing the indentations, but I am afraid that it was not a great improvement; what we need is to eliminate the indentations altogether without removing any of the text or any of the labeling (III., A., iv., (d), etc.) I also suggest that we not give the new text justified margins, but leave it shifted to the left, just as it currently is.

I have tried opening the module with a text editor like Notepad++, but I got a bunch of garbled characters, and I would not know how to eliminate the indentations with that program anyway. Can anyone tell me how to edit that module globally and swiftly, so as not to have to go through 1189 chapters individually?
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I'm an Independent Baptist running TheWord portable v 5.0.0.1481 from an external 500GB hard drive with over 1,900 modules installed and loaded in my current module set. I'm using 32-bit Vista Ultimate SP1 with a 2.7gHz processor and 4GB RAM.
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paul1149
Posts: 301
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:35 pm

Re: How to remove indentations from a book module globally

Post by paul1149 »

The original Guzik module was a home-brew and editable. The indentations were quite extreme in the aggregate, since the author kept a very detailed hierarchy. Since then there is a new version, and the indentations are much smaller, clearly designed, this time, with the aggregate in mind. On commentaries, to edit globally you have to use a query in an sqlite editor, and not a text editor. However, the newer Guzik module is not editable. It is encrypted and cannot be transformed into a user module. So it is what it is.
ErikJon
Posts: 431
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2012 11:24 pm

Re: How to remove indentations from a book module globally

Post by ErikJon »

Thanks for the detailed information, brother. I have faith that, With God, all things are still possible.
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I'm an Independent Baptist running TheWord portable v 5.0.0.1481 from an external 500GB hard drive with over 1,900 modules installed and loaded in my current module set. I'm using 32-bit Vista Ultimate SP1 with a 2.7gHz processor and 4GB RAM.
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