Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Archive Story Format - Plain Text or HTML?

And I stopped putting any of my fic on fanfiction.net over a year ago because their HTMLing system deletes the row of asterisks I use as section breaks - so my fic turned into one long chunk with POV switching all over the place. :p They also now insist on upload by chapter, so I can't upload a long fic in one go and I also need to have each chapter saved separately on my hard drive, which I never do. :p

I love the HTML display that Annette has on Annesplace, and she uses a similar one for me on the Doctor Who fanfic site she made me. These days, all the fic I read online is in HTML format, which makes it even harder to go back to look at anything on the L&C archive, because of the font, the proportional spacing, the short lines and the lack of real formatting. I think we must be one of the very few online archives that still sticks to plain text.

But then I've voted for HTML every time the question's been asked.

Wendy

That's one of my other bugbears about other websites I've visited. I just hate stories you have to save as segments, instead of getting it in one complete file. Especially when it's a long story! I sometimes feel the urge to sue the website owners for RSI on my fingers with all that clicking of buttons.

I had a heck of a time a while back with a story on ff.net for that reason. Good thing it was worth it! But, boy, was it tedious to dl.

LabRat

Incidentally...

You can open HTML files in MS Word. You can then save them in just about any format you want.

Only problem is that converting to txt takes out the extra line breaks between paragraphs and suchlike. But I'm sure there's a way around that.

Wendy, LabRat - I'm not particularly familiar with the author's side of fanfiction.net, but your concerns are sound and it looks like there exist some disadvantages as well. As the LnC archive is limited to completed stories, a segmentation would annoy both readers and writers.

Haha. I just voted and it tied it 23-23.

I voted HTML b/c I find it easier on the eyes. I've read at different places that use different formats and colours.

I used to like the plain text format, but I miss the italics and there is often erros in the achive files that jolt me out of my reading or make me do a double take on the sentence I just read. Also, I find it a bit annoying that I have to adjust it so I can print. I have not thought of an easier way that copying it all into Word or somthing.

That's happened to me many times when I first started out.

I prefer HTML. I like colours. I prefer a darker back ground and I'm not a fan of white or bright colours. I LOVE the look of Annesplace but now I find it difficult on the eyes I have my monitor on the darkest setting (brightness).

I don't have to worry about downloading or converting files to read. I either print it off (which I want to stop and get something electronic) or carry my laptop around with me.

Hmmm, I hope I said that right.

Whaha and I just de-tied it

I prefer html because, like many have already said before, it is easier on the eyes. After a few hours of reading plain text my eyes start to get blurry of the black-and-white-contrast. I'm not a big fan of very bright colours, because that too is very hard to read. But I'd prefer a light greyish kind of background

I prefer TXT. :p Tied at 24/24

It's nice to find a fic with bolding and Italics, but personally, I prefer to be able to easily squish the story to save paper.

I just had a horrible thought, Masques on a Palm Pilot. It'd be 5000 pages!

James

D8a, I think I actually READ Masques on my Palm Pilot once. And that was definitely before I learned how to get rid of the hard returns.

Just out of curiosity, how does .txt make it easier to squish a story and save paper? An HTML file has exactly the same number of words, etc, as a text file. .txt files save space on your hard drive, maybe, but I'm not sure they can save paper...

Kaylle

Please see my responce on How to - Archive Fanfic Reformatting Tutorial The formating of some HTML pages does weird things when you try and use a 4 column format...

James

Wouldn't work on my Palm Pilot. I'd have to do it in sections.

I've been working, slowly, on an online formatting tool that'll help convert back and forth between archive text format and generic text (good for printing in your word processor). There's also a simple HTML conversion. It has some kinks (I'm new at this programming stuff), but the beta version is online if anyone wants to use it:

lcfanfic.com/formatter.html

Basically you just past text into it, pick a conversion option, and click the submit button. To get rid of the line breaks in archive text, just go to a story on the archive and do an "Edit/Select All" and "Edit/Copy," then browse to the formatter and do an "Edit/Paste" into the text block. (Or use keyboard shortcuts: CTRL-A to select, CTRL-C to copy, CTRL-V to paste.) Same deal if you're wanting to turn word processor text into archive format. In your word processor's editing window, select all and copy.

Speaking of copying and pasting and how we read, I love using keyboard shortcuts to copy text around (goes quick!). In fact no matter what I'm reading, at the archive or here on the boards, I usually copy the text into EditPad Lite , a freeware text editor and Notepad replacement that lets you choose the colors and font to use. I find bold gray letters on a navy background very soothing -- been using that color combo since back in the Norton Ndos days. And when saving stories I'm reading, I usually type this where I stopped: "I STOPPED HERE." Easy to search for later. EditPad is a handy program. If you're looking for a good Notepad replacement, you might want to check it out.

-- Lauren

P.S. Just timed this: went to archive, copied "Masques," brought it into EditPad and saved. Time -- about 20 seconds.

Excellent, Lauren, very helpful. It's definitely looking as though this is the way to go, rather than making any general changes from text to HTML on the Archive. Seems more able to accomodate most viewpoints, either way.

LabRat

I voted for HTML because I really do love my italics!

*Sighs* Now I really should go through "Paint" and send it to the archive... I think I'll use '*'s for my italics.

I'm a fan of HTML, meself. I like italics and bolds and sure, I use them too much for emphasise, but sometimes its all a part of the story. And then I never know how to accent what should be italics in txt and I get all confused and my poor widdle bwain... And the line breaks kind of throws me off, as well. =D But then, I have a very lazy brain.

OK, I'm jumping in here. I voted for plain text, because it just seems to work better for me and my e-reader. I used Sara's method (thank you very much, Sara! ) and am able to get stuff over easily. I've downloaded from Annette's site, and mostly it works great, but there were a couple of fics that looked OK, but then I opened them on my e-book and, wow, did I have a problem! That took me a while to figure out (missed the reveal codes funtion from Wordperfect, darn it! Word makes it so difficult to find that kind of stuff). So I guess I'm old-fashioned, but the text is working for me. I'll change if I have to, though, and make it work, so honestly, Labby, it's not a very strong preference.

Did I make it worse, or is that the kind of fdk you wanted?

mmouse

It's not supported by html per se, you can screw the characters even more.
It would be done via setting a character set and it is not quarantied that the other person has the same charset available or the browser is configured to change charset or the other requirements that might come with specific charsets (you'd need a font that is combatible, you might need a specific language support installed on your computer).
Not to mention that all files would need to be converted to be combatible. Your pound for example would need to be converted to £ or £ and the last only if one of the Unicode charsets is used. If Unicode is used, you can't be sure the other side is set to understand it. You can't just write the pound sign into the text and expect the reader's software to show it and not some gibberish.
Also the people doing the conversion would need software that is ready to accept the unconverted files (starting with their email programmes, unless the stories are attached as files) and then convert them (some programmes can convert to html, but aren't capable to convert the characters).
I see it every day in a forum I frequent, they don't ask for a specific charset, all the Umlaute come out as question marks, because many other users post using the standard Windows charset, but my system is set to default to Unicode when no charset is specified. Unfortunately that windows character set doesn't map to Unicode or vice versa.
I also see it in some of the html stories at Anne's place, because those aren't always properly set up either, the "" or rather all the fancy characters used instead often come out all wrong.
As another example this forum askes for a specific charset (ISO-8859-1 also known as Latin-I) which supports many European languages, but you may still differing display of some characters and some European alphabets like Greek or Cyrillic aren't supported by it either.


I voted for text, becuase I remember a time when I had very limited internet time, grabbing all interesting things onto a disk floppy disk and reading them at home on a computer that did not understand html and would only do plain text.

And I actually like reading the files as they are formatted now, the text isn't as wide as it would be in a html file, which makes it easier for me to read it. Text has it's disadvantages, but it is the smallest denominator most system will agree upon.