Avoiding spacing issues

[Kotik]

Salve

I've just read Steelchaser's new story and noticed that it suffers from excessive spacing, as do many other stories in our archive. The reason for that is the software used to convert the DOC or ODT files to HTML, because it is rather inconsistent with how it handles paragraphs. That's why I made a short example of how to write your document to avoid the excess spaces - I'm using OpenOffice, but it works the same with LibreOffice or MS Office:

1. Create a blank Text Document - do not use any custom templates.
2. If not visible already, call up the "Styles and Formatting" window by selecting the option "Styles and Formatting" from the Format menu.


3. Right click the entry "Text Body" and select "Modify..." from the context menu


4. Set the "below paragraph" entry to 0.5 cm (or 0.19 in) and select OK

Result


Now you can see immediately that there is a big spacing between paragraphs 2 and 3, because there's been extra ENTER given. That would translate to a big spacing on the website later on. The spacing between paragraphs 1 and two is about right and translates as such to the website. Viola

A note to the admins: I don't know which software you're using to convert files, but I wrote some tool for myself a couple years ago that could weed out those extra spaces, so if you wanna try it, gimme a shout.

[Distracted]

Also, to tell if the document you just wrote will have spacing issues when it's posted you can click on "reveal formatting". If there are two paragraph codes after each paragraph when you do that (because you're spacing your paragraphs by pressing enter twice), it will post too widely. If you delete the extra code the document will space properly, but unless you set your formatting to automatically insert space after each paragraph (like Kotik just showed above) all your paragraphs will appear to run together in the original document once you delete the extra code. The reason for this is that the posting software automatically inserts space after each paragraph code.

[Kotik]

Good point there from distracted. The non-printable character feature is a good way to check your document. You can toggle the feature by selecting 'nonprinting characters' from the View menu in OpenOffice (or just press STRG+F10)

What you are looking for are the inverted-P-things (arrow). Each of them will be translated to a spacing on the website. You can see that there's only one between paragraphs 1 and 2, but two between paragraphs 2 and 3, so the one marked with an X has to be deleted. You can do so by using Backspace or DEL on it, just as you would delete a normal character.

[Cogito]

I'm puzzled that all the stories I've been involved in have had blank lines at the end of each paragraph, and displayed correctly when published. Has somebody been manually removing all the empty lines before publishing them?

[Kotik]

What format where those stories in? RTF, DOC or ODT?

When looking at the generated HTML source, it is visible that whatever way the admins use to create the HTML files, the resulting output differs for some reason. If you look at the source of Silverbullet's latest entry, you'll see that the paragraphs are not enclosed in <P></P> pairs, but separated by two <BR> tags, while in most other stories, the paragraphs are enclosed in <P></P>'s. Only in the latter case do excess CR's in the text document lead to excess spacing in the resulting HTML.

My guess is that it depends on the imput format.

[Silverbullet]

Kotik this comes from long habit. At one time messages were cut by hand (until the department communications branch got Optical character readers) I was trained to put two carraige rtrns and one line feed at the end of each sentence (no wrap around then) and one carriage return and two line feeds at the end of a paragraph. I still do it out of habit. although it is redundant with the wap around . Except for paragraphs. that is why you see Br Br and the end of the paragraphs in my stories.

SB

[Cogito]

What format where those stories in? RTF, DOC or ODT?

Mostly, they were RTFs. I expect Weeble's story was submitted as a .DOC. It's going to be confusing if the requirements for paragraph formatting vary with the document type.

[Kotik]

Mostly, they were RTFs. I expect Weeble's story was submitted as a .DOC. It's going to be confusing if the requirements for paragraph formatting vary with the document type.

It's not necessarily dependent on the document type. The inconsistencies in the generated HTML code may indicate that there are different converters in use for DOC and ODT files. I think the best method would be to use just one converter. Word2010 can read RTF's, ODT's and DOC's. That would make the results somewhat more predictable. There are several things that could be improved if one of the newer DOC2HTML converters would be used:

• Paragraphs could use a the text alignment 'justify'. HTML easily supports it and it would make things easier on the eyes.
• We could use pictures in the stories. There's a truck load of nice screen caps available at trekcore, which one could use. Those, who know TLR's epic Lizzy-Series on HoT know how much some pictures can contribute to the atmosphere of a story.

I cannot tell for sure, but I get the impression that many things are still done manually, which would explain things like comments getting mixed up and inconsistencies with chapter titles. The converting of documents seems to be one on those manually performed things.

Coming back to the original topic: If you use Word, OpenOffice or LibreOffice to write your documents, and you use the hints that Distracted and I have given in earlier posts, you should be on the safe side.

[Cogito]

I'll try that next time, although in the past I've not followed that convention and it came out OK as described above.

While people are thinking about doc converters, what are the rules for getting bold/underscore/italic formatting preserved? When I've included this in RTF it didn't get preserved in the published HTML.

[Distracted]

We used to have to insert italics and bold codes manually when we were using FTP to post. I don't post anymore but I think now if it's a doc format document all that transfers automatically. Maybe it's different for RTF. I dunno, since everything I send in is doc. And I'm guessing that Cogito isn't having any spacing problems because his default document setting inserts space after each paragraph automatically, eliminating the need to double space to distinguish paragraphs. That's the way I have mine set and I don't even have to think about it anymore. Of course, I have to go back and change it when I write other things.

[Kotik]

Well, Dis, if you, or whoever is in charge of the posting right now, would allow me to help, I could provide a bunch of tools, who would make all this a lot easier. Before I started to get the really lucrative contracts with the big boys of German industry a couple years back, I used to do a lot of web designing and programming. Since many customers used to deliver their texts as word documents, I wrote several tools to convert them to HTML, including the preservation of formatting and font settings. I think that could help with some of the problems we keep having, like stories being posted with huge gaps, in all bold fonts or the whole texts in italics.

[Distracted]

I think dark_rain and mjimyg are the tech wizards around here. You could pm them with your offer. You might also check with Elessar. I'm not sure they'd want to mess with the underlying code, though, if all it takes is a simple document set-up adjustment on the part of the author.

It's pretty easy to fix the problem afterwards if it's a short document, but I'm thinking that the change will need to be made when the document is first created for longer stories. Going back and deleting all those extra paragraph codes is too time consuming. I know. I used to do it for the authors I beta'ed for. It's a pain in the you-know-what. It's just so much easier to set the document up correctly from the get-go than to go back and correct it after the fact.

So everybody... when you start your story go to "page set-up" and set your document to space automatically after each paragraph. Then you can just start typing. Every time you press the "enter" key you'll get a double space and the document will post normally. Ta-daaa. Problem solved.

As far as the italics and such in RTF documents are concerned, I'm not sure whether putting the codes in manually will work or not. You'll need to ask the tech guys. All I know is that if you have the option to use the doc format, use it. Your bold and italics will be preserved.