On formatting posts

[biffmclaughlin]

So...I've noticed that my last few posts, which have involved far too much labor in terms of cutting and pasting and reformatting and OY for my liking, that adding the cut alters some of the font. At least, that's what I think is doing it.

Thus far it looks as though some sections, either at the start or finish of the post, are made smaller. Going back in to edit simply creates a bigger mess and I certainly cannot claim to be an expert in the fine art of troubleshooting html code and whatnot...and I'm not seeing the same problem anywhere else I've looked, so now I feel like a doofus. Any ideas what's going on?

This technopeasant thanks you for any advice you can offer!

Comments

[varelishawt]

Not being able to see the source, I would advise keeping your text as simple as possible. Personally, the only formatting I use is the italic HTML. Do you paste from something like Notepad, or Word? I've noticed that sometimes the source you're copying from can add sekrit, hidden formatting that wouldn't be allowed in something as simple as Notepad.

[scarylady]

I have occasional problems, too. I find it's usually because I've found some bit of foreign (Orlesian or Antivan) through Google, pasted it into Word and formatted it to match.

As Varelishawt says, it comes with hidden formatting, which surfaces once you move to HTML.

As a fellow technopeasant, I found that the only way I could find the additional formatting in HTML was to isolate the problem text and paste it in separately. That way I could delete the extra formatting code that surrounded it and then insert the peice between other, correctly formatted, bits. It's a pain, but it does seem to solve it.

[nagia]

Question 1: do you use Word, Open Office etc? Anything that has formatted text?

Question 2: do you paste directly from Word/whatever into the rich text editor?

As everybody else said, the nice, spell-checky, formatted word processors will throw their own code into the mix, causing weirdness.

You may want to try drafting/spellchecking in your normal word processor, throw in your bold/italtics/underline HTML, and then pasting that into the plain text/html editor for posts.

If you use the plain text editor, you may need to throw your draft into Notepad or Darkroom -- something that creates unformatted TXT files exclusively.

[darkrose]

I don't use the Rich Text Editor when posting. I write everything in Google Docs, including the < em > and < strong > tags for italic and bold, but *without* paragraph tags, and copy and paste it into the HTML editor in DW.

If you use Word, my recommendation is 1) don't; 2) if you have to, set Word so that it doesn't automatically convert HTML and then paste into the DW HTML editor. Until DW has a "paste from Word" function, that's going to be the best way to copy and paste directly from Word.

[biffmclaughlin]

Technopeasant brain...hurting...don't know HTML code...LOL. I do use Word. Further complicating the issue could very well be the fact that I wrote the original FF work in Word and posted it, then made a back up file of the whole thing. Since then, I've been pinching what I'm putting up here from that file. So loads of moving around and of course depending on where I am and what I'm doing, I'm either saving in .doc or .docx. No doubt you are all right; little bits of formatting are tagging along and messing things up.

Needless to say, I'll have to start using the HTML screen instead. Thanks so much for all the input!

[darkrose]

The only HTML you need to know is:

where [ ] = <>

[em] [/em] = italics
[strong] [/strong] = bold

(These are HTML 4-tags. Unlike [i] and [b], they are screen-reader compliant.)

To hyperlink, it's [a href="URL"]link text[/a]

I haven't done anything more complicated than this since 1997.

[elysium_fic]

What does "screen-reader compliant" mean?

[darkrose]

Screen reading devices, like the ones used for blind people, don't always parse the [i] and [b] tags.

[elysium_fic]

Ahh, very handy to know. I may have to change the tags I use, then.

[amhran_comhrac]

For programs that read the text on the screen- for someone who has vision problems etc

[elysium_fic]

I use OpenOffice and it doesn't seem to have any troubles cutting and pasting into the HTML editor. Also transfers beautifully to GoogleDocs and back. The main thing I had to be sure to do was to turn off the "smart quotes" auto-correct feature, as when you use smart quotes in a tagt (for example, < cut text = " stuff " > things get weird.

I tend to do my primary writing in OpenOffice and then share with my betas on Gdocs, because OpenOffice has nifty features that are either not present or not fully functional on Gdocs, like replacing -- with — and I even set it up to auto-correct names using special characters, so I can type "Riona" and it will convert it to "Rìona."

In your situation... hmm. It's not a simple matter of simple doing a "save as" and turning it into a text file, because then your italics or other necessary formatting could get lost. If you don't use italics or don't think much will be changed if you lose them, that's an option. Save it as text, open it in Notepad, cut and paste from there.

Or perhaps you might upload it to Gdocs, converting it to Gdocs format as you do so, and cut and paste from there? That might get rid of some of the special Word formatting. Maybe.

I use the html editor exclusively, both for discussion posts and fic posts. It just simplifies my life SO MUCH. I write my fics using HTML tags as I go, so instead of putting a word in italics, I type the open-tag and close-tag. I write in OO for its features, but honestly, were it not for my fondness for the emdash and names using special characters, I could just as easily write in Notepad. Makes things handy when moving from computer to computer, too.

I don't know any coding, but the HTML code for cutting and pasting fic, or just general discussion posts, is really simple and straightforward. Just remove the spaces from the following.

< i >< /i > or < em >< /em > for italics.

< b >< /b > or < strong >< /strong > for bold.

(I use the < i > and < b > because it just makes more sense to me.)

< strike >< /strike > for strikethrough.

< small >< /small > for small.

< cut >< /cut > to create a DW-cut, or < cut text = "title of the cut" >< /cut >

To create a link, it's < a href="URL HERE" >Name of Website< /a >

(Again, be sure to take out the spaces between the carrots and the stuff inside them.)

That's what I use about 98% of the time. The other 2%, I am usually pasting the embed code from a photo I want to include or a video on YouTube, which never seems to need much tweaking.

I am sure there are tutorials that explain it better, but there it is. Good luck.

[elysium_fic]

Oh, if you use FireFox, there is also an addon called LJ-Hook that can be configured to be used in DW as well.

With that, when you're in the comment box, you can right click and there are a bunch of options to insert the code for bold, italics, hyperlinks, etc, with just a single click. So you could select a bit of text, right click, and choose how you want it formatted, rather than typing the tags yourself.

Unfortunately, however, it uses the < div > tags, the purpose for which I have not divined yet. Which means that when doing a bold, instead of

< strong >< /strong >

you could get

< div style='display:inline; font-weight:bold;' >< /div >.

However, it has the option to create your own tags, so I did that and used the tags I mentioned above. I don't usually use that addon, because I'm so used to typing the tags that it doesn't slow me up any, but for the neophyte, it might be helpful.

[amhran_comhrac]

There are tons of designer type people who, for reasons known only to them, think HTML will be completely, totally gone in a few years. Replaced entirely by CSS. So the DIV tags are from that.... because you know, it's SO MUCH EASIER to make a div to bold one word than to just use a teensy little tag. Why use one word when you can use half a dozen, after all?
They need to give it up. HTML will never go away. Not until they come up with something that's actually easier. CSS can do more, sure. It's definitely not easier, though. Especially for basic text formatting.
< /rant >
(can you tell I got into several arguments with my professor when I took a class on web design and it was all CSS all the time?)

[elysium_fic]

Oh, hell no.

HELL no.

Or, if they insist HELL no.

They can pry by < b > and < i > tags out of my dead, cold fingers.

[scarylady]

I'm betting Biff's technopeasant brain just dribbled out of her ears. I know mine did.

[elysium_fic]

Sorry. :(

[scarylady]

Joke, darlin'. God, you really need to stop writing that gloomy fic. It's killing you. Bouncy Sigrun is what you need; wide smiles and not a care in the world.

[elysium_fic]

You're right, it is. Unfortunately, this chapter of Elysium isn't helping any.

[biffmclaughlin]

My brain, my brain!! Oooh, there it is...Um, yeah. Thankfully I can come back to all of this in my email, and I did actually learn a thing or twenty, so it's been a good day!

[cave_fatuam]

I have decided I'm going to do something very stupid and silly to help you. It will probably be up tomorrow or Thursday, but seriously... HTM-Elf is going to happen... and Zevran is going to be squishy faced. :D

[elysium_fic]

This I can't wait to see.

[biffmclaughlin]

Ooh, I like surprises! Although my initial, gut reaction was "what are you doing to my...er...Bioware's elf??"

[cave_fatuam]

I assure you it will be done with the utmost respect adorableness, mi querida .

[biffmclaughlin]

(squeals)!

[thouartaviking]

This may help you. http://w3schools.com/html/default.asp

We used it in my web design class very often, and it's what I refer to when I've forgotten something.