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Post by ablatedcrayon on Jan 4, 2009 2:48:37 GMT 1
One of the most insurmountable problems I have with this archive is the problem of posting a finished story to the site. Why?
Italics and justification, plain and simple. When I write in a word processor, I don't write [ i] and [ /i] around what I want to italicize, I just hit ctrl+i and do it. Now, when I copy and paste it here, I lose my italics entirely.
So basically, I need a macro that takes the invisible character formatting of a word processor and instead inserts html tags.
That way, by running one simple macro, I can convert it to something that will appear like it should on this site.
My question: does such a thing exist? It sounds reasonable, but I have no idea how to do it myself.
If you have any advice, let me know. Until then, you'll only find my fanfiction on the ff.net site.
Furthermore, as a workaround, what about posting links to stories that are elsewhere? Like PDF downloads, or links to the ff.net site? Does that work for you, Rascarin?
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Post by Mister Buch on Jan 18, 2009 21:04:49 GMT 1
I noticed this problem too, and just got lazy. I posted my big fanfic and just left the lack of italics alone. In future I will take the time to stick a [ i] in there.
I have no advice I'm afraid.
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Post by Rascarin on Jan 19, 2009 20:26:26 GMT 1
As far as I know, proboards has no such recognition system built in. Annoying, I know. Admittedly, a forum style website is hardly the ideal for a fanficiton website; however, its all I know how to work with. I have no problem with linking to other sites if you want to do that to have your story here too.
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Post by ablatedcrayon on Jan 22, 2009 4:08:20 GMT 1
Yes, but we still appreciate you for doing this. Where else could we go to get to Mock Effect? Hehehe. I don't understand why ff.net doesn't allow screenplay format fanfictions. That's rather--unnecessarily restrictive?
I was more thinking of a macro running inside the word processor itself that changes the document, as opposed to a recognition system built into the forum (as I was mostly certain, like you stated, that such a thing doesn't exist).
Good to hear I can post links at least. Should I? Makes me wonder--how many people who come here for fanfiction don't also go to ff.net and check there already. It might be somewhat redundant.
AblatedCrayon
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Post by Mister Buch on Jan 22, 2009 4:11:13 GMT 1
I don't understand why ff.net doesn't allow screenplay format fanfictions. That's rather--unnecessarily restrictive? They're bloody eejits. I'm still sore about that. One of the stories they deleted wasn't even backed-up on my PC.
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Post by ablatedcrayon on Jan 22, 2009 4:15:40 GMT 1
Ouch. Guess you learned that lesson the hard way So you lost your entire account, not just the one story, all in one fell swoop, eh? That is rough. I knew they took the story down; I didn't realize they took all the stories down. Cretins. AblatedCrayon
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Post by Mister Buch on Jan 22, 2009 4:17:58 GMT 1
Actually no, the account is still there with one story - the only one I did that wasn't a script / parody. It was a Star Wars thing. And really I should have backed the other one up.
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Post by TerrorK on Jan 22, 2009 8:29:32 GMT 1
What I do is import my .doc document into Dreamweaver which keeps and converts the italics. Then I do a find and replace for both <i> and </i> so that they also have the square-bracket variant. Then I can select all and paste into the forum. Takes less than a minute to do.
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Post by ablatedcrayon on Mar 17, 2009 20:47:47 GMT 1
I'm back, and I have news!
I've finally found a way for us to at least somewhat simply convert between a word document where the words are already italicized and a forum post, where you need tags like [ i ] and [ /i ].
This is designed with Word 2003 in mind; it'll work in '07, but the buttons for macros and stuff are in different places, so you'll have to hunt.
First off, hit Alt+F8 to open the macro window in word. Type in "TagIt" as the name, then click "Create". A VBA programming window should open up. Highlight everything it inserted via a default, and replace it with this:
Sub TagIt() ' ' TagIt Macro ' Macro originally lifted from: ' http://www.hackernotcracker.com/2008-10/macro-based-html-tag-support-for-microsoft-word.html ' Dim Tag As String Dim OTag As String Dim CTag As String Tag = InputBox("Please enter the tag you want to use." & vbCr & vbCr & "Example: 'i' for ""[i][/i]"" or ""strong"" for ""[strong]""") If Tag = "" Then End End If
OTag = "[" & Tag & "]" CTag = "[/" & Tag & "]" Selection.Text = OTag & Selection.Text & CTag End Sub
Press the save button and close the VBA window. Next, let's make the macro easy to access via a keyboard shortcut.
Tools > Customize > Keyboard (it's a button in customize window)
Scroll down "Categories" and find "Macros". The adjacent window should switch to a list of all macros you've got on your version of word. Find "TagIt" and select it.
One of the text boxes says "Press a new shortcut key:" Select that text field, then type the shortcut you want to use. Make sure it isn't something that interferes with other keyboard shortcuts you already have (like CTL+o, since it's for the Open file window, would be a bad choice). You'll know yours is ok if the "Currently Assigned To:" field says "[ unassigned ]". I chose Alt + H.
Click "assign" and close both dialog windows. You're all set.
Now, when you have a story ready for posting, you must highlight something that's formatted in italics or bold, and run the macro.
Quick side note: What I recommend is that you write a story normally, not using tags, and save the file. Then use "save as" to clone the file and add something like "tag version" or "forum version" to the end of the filename. That way, you'll have both versions, and you can choose between them according to what you need--the normal version for sites like fanfiction.net, and the tag version for forums.
Please note, it doesn't matter if the tags themselves get italicized by the word processor or not. None of that formatting will survive the copy->paste into a forum window. There's no need to be anal about it; it'll just take up extra time. Just make sure the tags surround the appropriate text.
So, go through the story, select appropriate text with the mouse, run the macro. Rinse and repeat. For italics, you type "i' into the input dialog and hit enter. For bold, you type "b". You get the idea. Whatever goes into that macro dialog's text field will be the contents inside the square brackets.
Unfortunately, this still forces you to comb through the story to add tags. Long stories will still take a long time to go through and change. It makes it a little easier because it's less typing and you're just selecting the text instead of inserting it yourself at the start and finish of each formatted section.
Hopefully this is all clear and helpful to those of you posting stories here.
All the best, AblatedCrayon Edit: two lines were cut from the code. I put them back in just now.
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