I have a text file which is a downloaded closed captions file.
Each line is only up to number 4 on that measure bar at the top of the Libre text page.
What’s that? Four inches?
I’ve been going down there doing a delete at the end of each line which brings the lower line up. Very tedious.
I guess i need something to delete the carriage return line feed at the end of each line, is that right? stretching my memory back a few decades.
Can I get such a thing? A command or a macro or something?
You should be able to get the result you want using LO’s Find & Replace, set to use “Regular Expressions”.
The LO Writer 5.4 Guide, which you can download free from English documentation | LibreOffice Documentation - Your documentation for LibreOffice, explains the procedures involved. Look particularly at “Use wildcards and regular expressions” on page 73.
The “Find & Replace” installed with LO does not bring with it a list of regular expressions or say what they do. You can find a comprehensive list on LO’s Help at List of Regular Expressions - LibreOffice Help. You then type the appropriate expressions into Find & Replace.
This can get a bit tedious and a strain on the memory, so I prefer to use the “Alternative Find & Replace” extension which has a list of expressions and says what they do. You can download it separately from https://extensions.libreoffice.org/extensions/alternative-dialog-find-replace-for-writer and install it on LO (the LO guides explain how).
Some points to watch are:
Does your text have a space between the end of each line and the paragraph end mark you want to remove, and is the original text consistent about this? If the text is consistent a little common sense will tell you what to put as the “Replace” instruction. If it is inconsistent you might need to think about how you make it consistent before replacing the paragraph end marks.
Presumably the original text has paragraphs. If these involve spacing by manual insertion of blank lines (which will end in a paragraph mark) you might find it simplest to do the change in stages, first changing the blank lines into something easily recogniseable and not used elsewhere, then replacing all the remaining paragraph end marks, then getting rid of the “something” you inserted.
If the documents are very long the conversion can take a long time. I have the impression that the “Alternative Find & Replace” is slower than LO’s original (but others more expert than I might tell us I am wrong).