writing subs What software do you use?

[epsilon]

Another Q regarding writing subs.
Some may do it all online in the strolen html form. I tend to write it up in word (Open office actually, Im a linuxian or basic text and then paste it into the online form when its all done. However its hard to preempt the fromat and html markup. either your word doc has and and <dt> splattered across it making it hard to read or you have to add this after you have pasted the basic text. This then makes it hard to modify later.

I tend to do allot of work offline, so if anyone has any ideas on how to get around this Id be most appreciated.

[MoonHunter]

When using word I tend to mark various things that will need HTML or special handling when I transfer it with a

• . That way I can do a quick search for and then fix each tag or link or what ever to make it easier to transfer.

[epsilon]

hmm ok I was hoping id missed something.
I have worked with html markup a little and even msword docs as html and various web authoring apps but none seem to transparently allow me to transfer into the strolen form. As the strolen form must have its roots in html I was expecting to find a standard and thus a wysiwyg editor.

its frankly driving me up the wall. Gets in the way of my imaginative flow anyway.

[Ancient Gamer]

Why not write your subs in Word,
transfer them to these forums,
bolden and change size at will using the GUI,
then check the "translate from bb code" box when submitting to the main site?

[valadaar]

Thats an interesting approach AG - have to try it.

I generally just hand code it myself, though it is a pain with tables

Now, I have used Words ability to save as html to do posts as well, but a lot of formatting is turfed by the scholar's canvas unfortunately.

Oh, and does anyone know how to imbed images from the gallery?

[Ancient Gamer]

Yeah, upload to the gallery, then link to it thusly:
[[normal|Swallowed.jpg|middle|The Town Eater]]

The image is called "swallowed.jpg" (in this case), it is a "normal" picture, as opposed to a "thumb", it is positioned in the "middle" and is called "The Town Eater".

[valadaar]

Tried that and get a nice box with a red 'x'

[Murometz]

Thats because the gallery doesnt work, unfortunately.

[valadaar]

Well, I figured out part of what is wrong.

When you post [[normal|Swallowed.jpg|middle|The Town Eater]], for example, it assumes it is in your own gallery - you can't use someone elses image.

And, I cant find anywhere how to post my own picture...

[manfred]

I generally just hand code it myself, though it is a pain with tables

Now, I have used Words ability to save as html to do posts as well, but a lot of formatting is turfed by the scholar's canvas unfortunately.

Note: Word tends to generate huge amounts of trash formatting, which can easily bloat a simple document to ten times its size. I'd suggest using an actual html editor for the tricky work of an Editing Master.

---

For the record: I usually type directly into the submission boxes, or use Google Docs for storing some temporary stuff and minor ideas. Firefox supplies me with the spellchecker and that's about it.

[Strolen]

Images - yes, assumes it is in your own gallery so you have to repost it except the gallery has yet to be fixed. The form may allow offsite linking with the img tag so that may be possible if the site you are linking from allows it.

Manfred is right about microsoft creating some of the most horrendous html possible. The script that goes through anything that submits it is located here http://htmlpurifier.org/ so that is protecting the site from broken html that could destroy any page it is loaded on. Can't stop doing that. Valadaar, that is also the code that is probably destroying the tables somehow, although I am not sure why. I still haven't had a chance to look at that.

If I write anything in word, I have turned off all the autocorrect crap that ruins normal text, I usually use bbcode in it because microsoft leaves it alone. I copy and paste that text into notepad which will strip anything wierd that word does to it, then I copy and paste that again into the actual submission. That is just the pain that microsoft causes by using odd characters. I don't trust it at all for creating any html. A good html editor with spellcheck would probably do you just as well as word really. There are probably plenty of free html coders around although I use Dreamweaver and PHPed for most of my stuff (since I haven't figured out Eclipse yet which is totally free).

[Strolen]

val, here is the image instructions. As you know may not work with the gallery in the condition it is in

http://www.strolen.com/guild/index.php/topic,3165.0.html

[Pariah]

I don't know, but I totally work in notepad.  But I'm just a sucker for pain. 

[epsilon]

ok I have had a play with some of this. Being a windows (at work) and linux (at home) man I need to solve both and also being someone who would like to get the formating nice i head down this muddy path. Id also like to add here that one of the reasons for this is while the scholars canvas is terrific (im not having a go at the Excellent Strolen site at all!!) its slow to flick from edit to publish view and the spell check is also another extra click. (unless like winxp you have form inline spell check on)

Things I feel an offline editor needs.
tabbed viewing of source view/published view
leave html tags as is (dont auto expand)
windows and linux compatible
inline spell check
allow cut n paste from editor to scholars canvas without the need to post format
cut n paste scholars canvas to editor.. (always complete a circle


Things I dont expect to solve
the various ways to link Strolen's bits. ie the square bracketed mumbo jumbo
im keeping this as a single sub, editor, not attempting to recreate the interlinking stuff off site. I cant see the point.

I tired a few (free) html editors. Note all are win/linux compat.
Kompozer (small neat and easy to fire up)
Mozilla composer (part of the mozilla suite)
Open office -writer html (large suite but if your using it already? why not)
Word (massive, ugly, microsoft, need i say more) anyway its not free

Test Procedure
I wrote a little test sub with all the various html tricks as outlined in the scholars canvas HTML help using the editor under tests source view. This generally required me to insert the test sub between the  body tags. Most editors filled in the basic html headers when a new page was created. This wasnt too bad. I just ignored it. Like a good Aussie beach goer, just swim between the flags
Switch tabs in the editor to see the "published" view. kewl!! looks as expected. Except for the blockquote and background colors of course. No doubt fixable if you really want it.

I cut n pasted the test sub as written in the editors source view into Scholars canvas and hit preview.
Again pretty much what I expected except for one major thorn. The
 character and handling of carriage returns.

Findings
In Source view most editors are verbatim. If its there its used if it isn't its not. I don't want to get into html and how it handles line lengths here but briefly, there is no line feed or carriage return in html unless the br tag is encountered.

Code: [Select]

Hello
goodbye
Mr<br> Chips
the Hello goodbye above would preview on the same line while the Mr Chips would be on two lines.

OK whats it all mean?
Well the scholars canvas seems to add an extra cr in somewhere

Code: [Select]

...end of paragraph.

<em>A new title</em>
Some more text...
Something as simple as this in scholars canvas equates to:

Code: [Select]

...end of paragraph.<br>
<em>A new title</em><br>
Some more text...

in the editors source view.
BUT while the scholars canvas produces the wanted

...end of paragraph.

A new title.
Some more text...

The source code as above pasted into the scholars canvas and then previewed ends up with extra cr
...end of paragraph.

A new title.

Some more text...

And if you dont use the br in the editors source view then the editors published view put the text like this
...end of paragraph.A new title.Some more text...

AGHHH!!

When cut n pasted into the scholars canvas the line lengths are also all messed up. Page width messes with the line lengths another possible lf cr problem. Preview mode fixes this somewhat but something somewhere does not ring true.

Summary
An html editor can be used but it still causes some transferal formatting problems and as this is the main reason for using html ed offline it kind of defeats the purpose.

If we could resolve the cr lf problems I believe it would help us all. Not that having a better editor would help the content of a sub of course:) but for us lower literary folk we need all the help we can get to create our minorpieces!!

[Kinslayer]

I got a great deal of use out of Notetab.  Nearly all of the webpages for Midian were written on it.  The Lite version is a free download, and still has many useful aspects.  That's the only piece of software I miss from my Windows days.  It does work on Linux with Wine, I'm told.  Mostly however, I just use Gedit as I don't trust neither the clipboard nor the Citadellian Gremlii.  It was automatically included with my distro (Ubuntu), and has an auto-tab function.  Gedit does handle html tags, but I find that I'm faster typing it out by hand than doing the highlight/click-on-tag bit.

[Ria Hawk]

If I'm working on a sub, usually I just do it on site and keep things as hidden subs until they're publishable.  If I'm working on something really large, something that's part of a larger set of things, or something I'm going to use off-site, my favored program tends to be Microsoft OneNote.  I have no idea where one would get it; I was given a free copy when I was in school.  Auto-save, tabbed notebook-style organization, image and handwriting functions.  The first two are more important to me, since I hate losing work and the tabs make it easy to switch between my notes and the actual writing, not to mention organize a lot of parts coherently.  Then, once I get done with it, I usually just copy/paste into either Microsoft Word or the data entry field of choice, depending on what I'm doing.