Michael wrote:
And it certainly doesn't help that formatting something using italics in Word and for posting on the boards are two very different things, thus making it quite impractical to create the source with proper italicization.
I see what you mean. For the boards though there's a roundabout way you could use. If you saved your story as HTML, you could use a text editor to replace the HTML <i></i> tags with board [i][/i] tags -- and get rid of practically all the other tags. I wouldn't recommend trying that straight from Word, because Word makes such ridiculously marked-up HTML files that it's impractical to try to edit the code manually.
AbiWord , however, saves very clean and simple HTML if you choose "Export as HTML 4.01" as your only export option.
Have I mentioned how great AbiWord is?
Just noticed that a recent version has added OpenOffice to its import/export list of file formats.
On a similar note: for practical purposes (basic ASCII characters only plus because it looks better in plain text) a lot of stories get submitted to the archives with their nice, typographic quotes replaced by the generic ASCII ones. Another potential nightmare to get those back.
Now I'm feeling guilty for destroying your smart quotes.
I think we started doing that because they displayed as funky symbols in ... heh, can't remember now where the funkiness was spotted but definitely remember seeing it. Have to admit I haven't seen many funky characters lately. I bet a good search/replace routine could get the curly quotes back -- (space)" = opening, "(space) or "(punctuation) = closing, etc. Or it could be a nightmare.
Did I already mention the epub conversion effort is awesome? Now, if I only had a nice epub-reader for Windows mobile...
Thanks! I hope the reader dcarson recommended works out for you.
Doranwen wrote:
Ahh, I see. The only reason I haven't considered doing that is because when you do a section break, it starts the new section on a new "page" for the reader. So it would be like having random blank space and jumping to a new page, but without a title to go with it. Since that looks kinda odd
The blank pages thing happens to me a lot with Stanza on the iPod Touch reading books from Project Gutenberg, and I got used to it. But I guess it is annoying, so I'll stop. Certainly easier NOT to format that way.
With older stories there's no TOC to go by, so I've been looking for authors' section breaks (usually marked by *** or something like that), especially ones that are kind of provocative or "cliffhanger-y," to make the breaks in Sigil.
Speaking of Sigil, Doranwen, I just noticed that when I read epubs I've formatted in desktop Stanza, I don't see chapter headings. But when I read epubs you've formatted, I do! Still seeing them in iPod Stanza. Can't figure that out -- will need to reread your steps in the wiki to see where I'm going astray in Sigil.
Carol wrote:
Thanks for thinking of my story, Lauren. I'm not committed to those asterisks so sounds fine
You're welcome, Carol. It's one of my go-to fics. When I read it again this line of Jimmy's had me chuckling: "You wouldn't believe how stubborn she is. I don't know what she wants, but you're probably gonna do it for her." Love it!
Thanks for cutting me slack on the asterisks.
Bob wrote:
I have added the words “Part x” at the split points. I like this because I can scroll up to the top of a section and see where I am.
Excellent point.
I have gotten frustrated by the TOC problems. Stanza on my iPhone seems particularly flaky about TOC navigation.
And with me it's the desktop Stanza. Weird!
Best wishes,
Lauren
