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

Every so often, we ask our readers whether they'd prefer to have stories uploaded in the plain text/Courier font as now or whether they'd prefer HTML. Up till now, the answer's always come back for plain text. Let's see if things have changed this time around.

I think HTML would just end up being harder to load for both the author and for you. And then sometimes the HTML's can't be read by a person's computer so they can't read the story. Uggg...

There are some things that would be nice to have - like italics, but I'd prefer to Keep it Simple.

Also if you went to HTML, it would be pretty hard for me to download those stories into my Palm Pilot and take it with me (so much easier than printing it.)

The first two are pretty much where I'm at with HTML, Nancy. It would be nice to be able to emphasis words with italics, etc, but one of my own personal pet hates when prowling on the net for fic is finding an author's personal website and it being in the most ridiculous colour scheme so it's hard to read.

So we'd have to choose any colour scheme carefully. And even then we know that pcs don't all look at colour the same way and see the scheme differently.

It probably wouldn't be too much harder work for Lauren, mind you. So that one shouldn't concern anyone voting. We were spurred on to ask this one again now because Lauren's found some rather neat HTML tools recently.

I didn't know that you couldn't dl HTML text to a PP, so that's something to consider, too, when we make our decision. Thanks for the input, Nancy.

LabRat

When I first started reading the archive I was a bit thrown off by the txt format. Now that I have been reading it for a while, I have become used to it and I really enjoy reading my fics in that format. I especially like having the file size in front of me so I know what I am getting myself into length wise.

BUT, I have voted for HTML because I do miss italics and have at times went over to Annesplace to read a story there in HTML just because it was a bit easier on the eyes. My main reason for asking for HTML is a silly one:

The txt format is hard to print. I'll be the first to raise my hand and say I was in the middle of a great fic and then was asked to go somewhere with my boyfriend. So, I have printed off a bunch of the fanfic pages and taken them with me to read on the trip. The txt versions don't scroll across the whole screen (if this makes sense) and thus uses more paper. So I have gone and found the original forum posts of the story just to be able to take up less paper.

So my vote was for a silly reason, but honestly I won't be upset either way.

Text for me, mainly because more words fit on the screen. I do occasionally miss italics, etc, but not enough to want to switch.

I don't think that's a silly reason at all, Jojo. I still feel guilty about the major rainforest that apparently was felled so that readers could print out Caped Fear (twice! I never heard the end of that from some of them ) and Masques!

How fascinating to see how evenly the votes are panning out so far this time around. Before it's always resulted in a massive majority for sticking with text. Very interesting. Glad we asked again.

LabRat

I voted plain txt just because I happen to have a really ghetto word program. I have a killer computer, but I'm still writing my papers and fics in Text Editor. It just makes me wonder how much of the fancy HTML would actually show up when I save files. :p But I could very well be in the minority here with that issue.

JD

I prefer .txt - for one thing, it's best for me because I can sync the files from my hard drive directly into my PocketPC so I can read stories when I'm on the bus. If they were in HTML, they would be a) twice as big and, b) all messed up when they end up on my PPC.

Besides... I like simple things. I can do complicated, but I really like simple a whole lot more.

Btw - Jen... you're so not alone. I can code HTML in my sleep if I fancied it, but I write my stories in *notepad*. I sometimes wonder why I have a big beast of a laptop when all I use it for is... Notepad. Cause it's all I do with the thing, write. (ok, maybe Google a bit and some MSN, but I do nothing else on the thing)

I'm with you. The worst one I've ever seen is purple on black. Now who the heck is supposed to be able to read that?

And as for the palm pilot, some HTML pages will save as TXT, but sometimes the formatting is so off that it's a lost cause.

Yes, this can be true, but I wonder if some of it's because of the way the person is saving it. It seems I've seen different TXT files that have a completely different look to them as far as spacing 'on the sides' is concerned. I think it has got to do with whether or not word wrap is being used, but I'm not sure.

Well, see now guys, what you need to do instead of printing out those fics is get a palm pilot or similar. You can take it with you. You can charge it in the car. There are even portable chargers. Some of them are fairly inexpensive now. You pick one up at full price for about $99 US dollars. Sound expensive? Think about it. Almost all of us have a printer, but when you are printing out 100's of pages, that eats up your ink and your paper. And considering the cost of ink, that can add up pretty fast. The one I've got cost about $450, but that's been a while and the prices have come way down. But I can tell you that's the about the best $450 I ever spent. It's been well worth it. I believe you can get readers for really cheap, but if you want to make any notes while you are reading, I'm not sure you could with a reader.

I said .txt, but I don't feel as strongly about this as I would have done a year or so ago.

I usually download files and import them into Word, then reformat them into a font that I feel more comfortable reading off the screen. (I gave up printing out fic a long time ago, but I used to reformat everything before printing, too.) I don't find the editing process difficult, and have become quite adept at using the search and replace functions.

I do read fanfiction elsewhere in .html, but, again, quite often cut and paste into Word and reformat. This is certainly easier now than it used to be with earlier versions of the programme.

I do like .txt, though, because I find it easy to guess the length of the story from the file size. I suppose I would get used to .html file sizes, but... (Personally, I prefer to think in word counts, rather than kilobytes, and I still struggle to relate the two.)

One thing that the archive has going for it is that you can download stories in their entirety, rather than having to download individual sections or chapters, as is the case elsewhere. If keeping the file sizes smaller, and in .txt, means that this can continue to happen, then please do so. Also, the less fussy format means that pages are quicker to load.

I am, I suspect, in the minority these days in that I still use a dial-up connection, so speed is a major factor. Broadband only arrived in my neck of the woods relatively recently, and I know that there are still places where it isn't an option. (I hope to upgrade soon. People keep telling me that it will change my life.)

This isn't really relevant to the question, but... I feel marginalised enough by the lack of technological options available to me, although this is a trade off I agreed to make when I chose to make my home somewhere that is officially classified as 'very remote rural'.

I can't access the L&C music videos or trailers, for example. And, away from the internet, I'm getting sick of television going to town with plugging free digital services. At the moment, I am subjected to endless adverts reminding me of all the additional channels I could get if only I switched to digital. But. I. Can't. Receive. Digital. Channels. Where. I. Live. Not without getting satellite, anyway. Nor can I get digital radio here. Actually, I can't get all the analogue radio or television channels, either, and my mobile phone reception is patchy, at best.)

I guess what I'm saying here is this: some of us aren't able to run full pelt into the 21st Century. If any upgrading is going to leave us behind, do it thoughtfully and gently, please.

Thank you.

Chris

I'm not really sure about this whole thing.
I don't really need italics etc. but I absolutely loathe this line break thing in almost the middle of the page.

What makes me wonder:
Why would txt be better for usage on a pocket pc?

I use one and normally I take the stories from annesplace rather than from the archives.
I would copy and paste them into word and save them as a doc on my SD card.

Bye,

Jana

Line break thing?

LabRat

I voted HTML. As a reader, I don't mind the text files, but as a writer, I dislike them. I miss italics. I miss accent marks. I don't like the courier font. HTML just looks better, I think. Until I came here, I'd never posted fanfic in text format, nor had I ever burdened my readers with hard-to-read fonts or color schemes. Yes, some writers do, but there's absolutely no reason the archive couldn't keep the white background and black text in some comfortable font.

Just my .02. I'm content to go along with the majority, obviously, but given a choice, I'll pick the HTML.

Caroline

Yeah, dial-up!

What do you mean, that's not a good thing?

I think I can get some sort of broadband, or cable internet (though my cable service is pretty sketchy), but I presently refuse to ante up for the different modem, and higher monthly rates.

What can I say? I'm old, and set in my ways.

Tank (who probably wouldn't be able to figure out how to watch all those streaming videos anyway)

Actually there are lots of places that have only dial-up available. If I lived about 20 miles from where I do now, that would be my only option.

I think the HTML might be harder for some writers to use. Somebody would have to tell *me* how to do it. If that means loading a file with MS Word or similar, then I could handle it. If it means I'm going to have to go through some hosting agency, I'd be upset. Some of us are not terribly computer literate. I know more than some folks, but I'm not an IT person. I know that a lot of time, I ask for explanations and what I get is given in computerese, and I'm usually left on the clueless side. (Recently I was told by someone to read the instructions. Well, dang, if I'd understood them in the first place, I wouldn't have asked the question.)

As for why TXT works better for me with my hand held, I couldn't tell you, Schnuffichen. I just know I've had better luck with it. Maybe that's because my handheld is about four years old, but a lot of people that use them have even older hand helds.

I think this may have something to do with your computer settings. My TXT documents don't show up as courier unless I *change* the font. I also don't like courier. My comes up as something called Lucinda console. You have several options to choose from. Now, when I first tried the internet, I found fan fic at the same time (1998). Then my files *did* show up as courier. But then I played around and changed my settings. And that old computer is the one that I've been using until the last couple of weeks, and it also shows up as lucinda console. You may know this already, but I'll tell you how to change it. In Windows, go to the Control Panel and then pick Internet Options. The general tab should come up. Near the bottom you will see 'fonts'. Choose that. There you can change your web page fonts and your plain text font. There aren't a lot of choices, but maybe that will help a little. I don't know how to do it with other systems, but I'm assuming it would be similar.

I totally agree here. I'd be upset if I had to spend time making the text pretty. I don't do it when I post it on the boards, other than putting recaps in italics. I wouldn't want to have to do it before I send something up to the archive either.

Now mind you, I really *can* code HTML with my eyes closed - I just think if I had to go through all the trouble of formatting it so it looks nice for other people, when I myself think it looks perfectly fine the way it is when I type it up in Notepad, I might not want to bother. And having someone else format it for me would annoy me - I don't mind someone fixing typos or punctuation in my text file, but formatting the story for me isn't the same thing. It wouldn't *look* like my story anymore. (yeah, I'm nutty that way..)

And then if you're just going to have an HTML page for the sake of having it in that format, but have the stories show up with no background and pretty much the same as they do as .TXT files (no weird color schemes, no strange fonts, etc.), then I'm wondering what the point is in having it in HTML anyway.

{looks around} Hoping that wasn't me...
I have a tendency to forget that people don't understand techy stuff as well as I do.

I chose HTML because it just looks better in a browser, which is one of the two major ways I read fic. The second way is to copy all the text into a Word file and turn it into a Microsoft Reader-format eBook and copy it into my Windows Mobile phone.

When reading on a web browser, it's easier on the eyes.

When copying to an eBook, either way is just as easy to convert to an eBook. When I copy the text into the Word file, I have to convert single carriage returns to double carriage returns for readability for HTML. With text only, there is one additional step. There are carriage returns at the end of every line rather than only at the end of a paragraph, so I have to convert carriage returns to spaces or nothing depending on if a space already exists. Then I convert the paragraph carriage returns to double. Then I save the file and use Word to convert it to Reader format and I upload it to my phone for reading.

At the time I write this, the results are 13 for text and 12 for HTML. Pretty evenly divided.

Oh, no, no, no. Writers don't do anything. The Archive does. All the writer has to do is submit the story as normal. Except that they can use italics, bold, whatever. The Archive would convert the files to HTML before uploading. It would work in the same way that Annnette uploads stories to Annesplace. You don't have to do anything special when submitting stories to her, you wouldn't have to when submitting to the Archive.


LabRat

Well, I don't know about the rainforest, Labrat, but as someone who lives in an area of the world where the manufacture of paper and lumber is our largest industry, I just want to say 'Thanks.'

ML (who writes long stories specifically to help out the paper industry)

I voted for plain text, but that's only because there was no "other" option.

I don't know if it's possible to do this and still have it inside the web browser, but what about .rtf? It's mostly plain text, but you get text formatting capabilities like italics and bold, and most computers can read it.

You could probably also read it on PDAs if you had a program on your PDA that could read files made by word processing programs like Word or Word Perfect--probably even Works.

So, how 'bout that RTF?

I don't know if size is an issue with my next suggestion... But why not have the story in HTML for the archive and then offer another link for download of the story in .txt for those with the palm pilots?

Nope, Lara, your explanations have been clear and concise. Otherwise, I'd never email you and ask dumb questions.

I'm like Lara. How is that going to change the look of my fic? Maybe some would think that's just a silly thing, but I also don't want my fic to end up looking differently. It might be okay if the author approved the look first. I know I'd be mighty cranky though, if my fic was loaded with strange colors. I also hate reading fics with strange colors, and there have been a few that I just haven't read because of the headaches that the weird colors can produce. Sometimes if the fic seems really good, I'll convert it to text, but sometimes that doesn't work very well so it's just not worth it. And would the author still have a choice of fonts? I have vision problems, also, and some of them are a bear to read.

Darcy, about a month ago, I would agreed with you on the rtf. But since then, I've had a couple of betas sent to me that I haven't been able to open. I have no idea why, but that would be a bummer.

Well, by definition it would look differently. You'd submit the story as a plain text file and it would be uploaded in HTML format. The uploaded file would have a colour background and a particular font other than just plain Courier and would include italics/bold etc for emphasis where the author has indicated.

If - and it's still a very big if - the Archive was to switch to using HTML, we would work out a standard, hopefully neutral, colour/font scheme.

Letting individual authors choose different fonts, colours etc to suit their own individual taste would be way too cumbersome and time-consuming and we wouldn't want to go there. It would also look very messy, I think, if no two story files were the same. We're very big on standardisation on the Archive. We like to keep things simple.

However, HTML doesn't mean jarring colours. Here\'s an example of one of my fanfic uploaded to Annesplace in HTML. So there's absolutely no reason why an HTML format can't be entirely neutral.

ROTFL. Thanks, ML.

I imagine that having to store every story on the Archive twice would be both unwieldy and impractical, since it would double the size of the site. And mean double the work for Lauren, too. But perhaps Lauren knows differently on that one. Something to check out anyway.


LabRat

That's what I meant:

Wow... I even had to think some time about what I could have meant with that comment...

@Classicala:
Thanks a lot - I didn't know you could change the font in which the stories are shown

Best,
Jana

I'd greatly prefer HTML - I post my stories to several archives, the LC archive is the only one that doesn't use it, and every now and again I notice things like line breaks in the middle of paragraphs, at least once lines that didn't have breaks at all and scrolled off the screen to the right, and so forth. HTML doesn't have these problems, because inside a paragraph the line breaks are automatically inserted to fit the page, unless you put a line break command in the text.

Most of the archives that use it restrict the commands to the lowest common denominator, ones that can't do much harm - typically "center", "italic", "bold", "line break" and "paragraph break". A paragraph without any text formatting should be only seven characters longer than a plain text paragraph - (P) at the start - I'm using ( and ) instead of angle brackets - and (/P) at the end. This would be (I) Italic (/I), (B) bold (/B), or (CENTER)centered - sorry, cant't remember how to do this on the message board editor(/CENTER), and this would be a
(BR)line break.

The reason why HTML often appears to be much more bulky is that Word and Frontpage both produce hugely complicated HTML which tries to micromanage every letter of the document. If you write it in a text editor and keep it simple there is virtually no file size problem, and the results are considerably easier to read.

RTF and Word documents should be avoided - RTF gives different results (e.g. what the fonts look like) on different word processors, and Word can carry macro viruses.

Incidentally, one of the sites I post to, Twisting The Hellmouth, keeps the documents as HTML but has the option to read them as plain text - no idea how they do it, but that site has several thousand stories archived and the conversion is done on the fly, not by keeping two versions of the story, so it's obviously possible.

Ah, I see. Actually there's a very good reason why that's so...I just can't for the life of me remember what it is. I recall that, back in the day, it was done deliberately to solve a problem several readers had with the files. What that problem was however...you got me there. Lost in the mists of time...

Isn't it possible to save the story file to your pc, change the margins, and then print it out, if you want to use less paper? Can't say I've ever given it a try myself, but on the face of it, I can't see why you couldn't.

I do know that at one point, Lauren was experimenting with a program that would produce a page on the Archive where readers could just click on either option - HTML or Plain Text - as suited how they wanted it formatted for reading. I got the impression though that there were operational glitches that couldn't be ironed out. Or that Lauren is still working on trying to make it work for the Archive. It's certainly another idea worth pursuing though.

I'm still fascinated by how evenly the vote is working out so far. Back up to 50/50 as I post. Well, here anyway. Over on the Archive the vote is going more pro-text. Always in the past when we asked this one the vote was massively for text.

LabRat

I chose plain text.

Partially, I suppose, because I dislike change. ASCII text was good enough for my grand-pappy, gosh darn it, and it's good enough for me!

I've got a routine for stories I want to keep: Save from archive. Open from Word. Run a macro that takes out the hard line breaks. Do a Ctrl-A to select all and change the fonts. Tidy up the header information, then save as a .doc file. If it's a favorite and I'm feeling like it, I'll insert bookmarks in my file, so I can skip straight to the good bits but that's optional.

HTML would look prettier (well, depending on color scheme ) but the good thing about plain text is that it can be read by pretty much any browser, device, or word processing program ever made. HTML, otoh, might not be accessible to everybody (or take way too long to download). Still, it's worked for Annette all these years, so it can't be too awful.

PJ

p.s. To take out the hard line breaks while preserving the paragraphs:

Find all double hard returns (Ctrl F, ^p^p) and replace them with a character string that's not anywhere in the text -- I usually use ####. So that takes out the double hard returns (paragraph breaks) but lets you find them again later.

Then, find all the remaining hard returns, and replace them with a space (or possibly nothing, depending on how the file's been set up). That takes out the line breaks.

Last, search for your nonsense string (like ####) and replace it with one hard return. That breaks up the paragraphs again quite neatly. And since I've got it as a macro, it takes only a minute to do.

The major difference to me is the hard returns. .txt has to have them. The reason is Word Wrap. Browsers wrap text if it's in HTML format, but not if it's in txt. Also, some txt readers (especially the early ones) lack the Word Wrap feature.

In fact, that was the major selling point given the first time the archive suggested switching to HTML format. The story would have been in the same font, same black & white scheme, etc., but the words would wrap automatically. Bold, italics, etc were just icing on the cake.

Paul

Maybe the reason for this change is that people simply use faster computers, and have faster internet connections, than they did the last time the question was asked.

On a practical note, one of the disadvantages of plain text is that foreign language characters aren't supported - for example, if I was to set a story in Britain I might want to use the UK pound (money) sign, and it isn't part of the ASCII character set but is supported by HTML. Foreign names and words also often omit umlauts and other special accents that are possible in HTML

Re the appearance of so many unexpected line breaks in stories - I think that sending them by email causes the problem. Most text email programs insert hard line breaks if a line is over a certain length, even if it is pasted in without the breaks.

Well, first off, I'm sitting here shaking my head at myself.

Now I've got macros set up like Pam does--reformats a whole fic for me in seconds with a simple keystroke. (Hey, Pam, I've got the font changes and margin changes included in my macros. )

And after going through all that, and having gotten used to the way things have been... I'm actually thinking I should have voted to keep the text. :rolleyes: Not to mention there's old custom of using asterisks to *emphasize* words. It'd be a shame to lose that, no? Or am I just being an old fuddy-duddy? :p

Sara

I voted PlainText. I'm so horribly old school. I don't believe in HTML in email. Absolutely hate it. And not only can I code HTML with my eyse closed, I do it in WordPad (better than Notepad because it has the last 4 files in the File menu). I think the Archive is almost fine just the way it is. However, I don't print out stories. Until recently, I didn't have a printer at home, and I'm just used to reading it on the screen.

Word and RTF is much to be avoided, not only for the reasons listed above, but because it won't display in a web browser. The reason why the choice is TXT and HTML is that both will readily display in a web browser. The other two must be downloaded to the computer itself before it can be opened.

I think the original reason for the current line break format on the archive was screen size. If I remember correctly, the current width is 72 or 80 characters. Back in the day of text browsers, ya know, before all these fancy graphics you youngins are used to, that was as much that fit on the screen. Even with the advent of graphical browsers (which came along well before the Archive, but was still pretty darn fancy for the time), it looked just fine on a 640x480 resolution. It's a bit outdated today with these larger monitors and higher resolutions, but no one has ever brought up changing the line length. (Hey, look, another poll!)

Now that one is not bad at all – nice black and white. It seems I’ve seen some at Anne’s Place that were not nice black and white, though. I’d be okay with it as long as it stayed black and white. Any colors though can cause folks with vision problems to not be able to read it. Like for instance I saw a story from another sight not very long ago that I assume someone thought was a nice neutral color. The background was a light teal. I couldn’t read it. As long as you keep that in mind, it would be okay.
~~

I actually have to admit that this is usually easier with HTML – not always. Changing the margins with TXT usually doesn’t work for people who don't understand exactly what a macro is....
~~~


~~~

Now you just need to tell me how to do that. Heck, I can’t even figure out how to do a color background with Word. (Not that I’d want to do that very often.)

Uhhh… Now you explained it, but can you put that in words I understand? (Non computerese? ) I'm still clueless....
~~~

Not always so, Marcus. Lots of folks are using older computers, and are stuck with dial-up. Some places just don’t have faster connections available. If I lived 20 miles from where I do now, I’d be stuck with dial-up. Cable internet was not available where I live until about two years ago. Broadband was very limited and still is. If I lived in the next town, I wouldn’t have cable internet available. Until the last couple of weeks, I was working on a computer with 64 mb RAM and a 4 GB hard drive. It still works fine, and I’m sure lots of other people have computers even older than that. That computer was about eight years old. My cousin uses one older than that. I believe it might even still be running Windows 3.1. (Fortunately, I was finally able to get my newer computer fixed.) Ahh.. remember the days when hard drives were optional?

Ah, yes, I can see that as a problem. I recently wanted to post the word Russian in the Russian language – wouldn’t work, and that was on the boards.
~~

Must have been some little trick I picked up, because I no longer consider myself extremely computer savvy – too much stuff now. Now when we used Windows 3.1, I could do anything with it.
~~~

I rather like the asterisks, too. I do hate reading entire parts of a fic when it’s in italics.

This is it for me in a nutshell. I hate the hard returns. I generally save fic to my computer and either print it out or transfer it to my eBook reader. Either way, chances are I'm going to change the layout of the page and the width of the paragraphs and end up with a bunch of paragraphs that look like this:

I hate having to search-and-replace all those hard returns, because inevitably they don't all get replaced properly, or things that shouldn't get replaced do, and the formatting is never quite right.

So if we could get rid of that, be it in html format or rtf or whatever, I'd be a happy campler. But obviously I'm not going to stop reading fic if we don't

I'm with you, Pam, on bookmarking all the double carriage returns, except I use zzzzz instead of your #####. I'll replace all the ^p^p with zzzzz, then replace all the ^p to just a space or nothing depending on if there is a trailing space or not. Then I replace all the zzzzz with ^p^p again. What all this does is retain the double carriage returns between paragraphs but filters out all the carriage returns within paragraphs.

I finally change the font to Times New Roman, which is optimal for Windows Mobile devices, straighten out the story header, copy one of the Steam pics as my cover page, save to Microsoft Reader format and copy the resulting file to my Windows Mobile phone. And I'm off to read a new fic!

Since you asked (and because my procrastination is getting out of hand), I made a little tutorial for reformatting archive fic. Perhaps later I can make a tutorial for making a macro, but this should do you for now.

Archive Fanfic Reformatting Tutorial

Let me know if anything still isn't clear!

Sara

Thanks, I'll check that out.

Cool tutorial, Sara!

And Pam and RL, I'm with you guys. I do the same thing too, but instead of #### or zzzzz, I use @@@@.

-- Lauren

I'm not sure that was the reason, Karen. Might have been, but I do recall at one point some years back a period when I had to fiddle around with the right margin for weeks on end to get it just right for a couple of readers who'd emailed that it was a problem for them. So it was possible, apparently, to make the right margin wider. It just was too wide for some readers and eventually it had to be shortened to what it is now. Which solved...whatever the problem was. It had, I think, something to do with printing the stories off. Maybe. Or I could be making this up as I go along....

Lauren? Do you remember what this was all about?

LabRat

My choice: HTML, because it offers more options and possibilities (along with CSS formatting).

What has always bothered me about the way, stories are archived in a plaintext way is the issue of linebreaks but also does it not allow any formatting of text at all. The archived stories vary from ~55 keys per line to over 70 and both values are too low for today's screen resolutions or too high for mobile devices.

On the other hand, having the stories archived in a HTML format is more challenging than one might believe at first. Color-themes and unfitting fonts are only one side of the problem. I've visited plenty of fiction archives that use some script software to aid authors and archivists in their work but more often than not, the sole benefits are for the creators and not readers. Because in the end, the way stories are displayed is marred by sidebars and other site features.

I'm rather fond of the story displays at fanfiction.net - because those can be directly imported from a word processor and therefore allow all formatting like bold/italics to be conserved.

Using HTML would also allow to comfortably modify your preferences, for example: if a HTML page is created on the fly by some script, you could save your preferences (background-color, font, font-size etc) in some cookie.

The filesize to download should not be an issue at all, because one can always modify the webserver to use compression or add some lines to a dynamic script. Then a 500kb story would only amount to (for example) 200kb anymore, despite using additional formatting.

LabRat, I'm not 100% sure myself, but I think we started out at 80 characters, then AOL readers complained it was cutting off at the margin. So we shortened the line length to 65 characters, and the complaining stopped. And so for consistency's sake, we've pretty much stayed at 65 characters.

-- Lauren

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.