-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ffml@ffml.fanfic.com [mailto:owner-ffml@ffml.fanfic.com]On
Behalf Of Richard D. Lawson
Sent: Wednesday, 26 August 1998 0:32
Shunsuke wrote:
I wholeheartedly disagree and see it exactly the
opposite. For writing fanfics, you should use a non-
formatting, 7-bit ASCII text editor. Be it Notepad,
VI, or edlin (I'm kidding), stick to a text only
program.
[snip Richard's rebuttal and description of how he uses Word]
Richard then said:
I agree that you shouldn't send a ".doc" file to the FFML, but
you can still
use an advanced word processor to create simple text files.
I agree with Richard. There are powerful advantages to using a word
processing program to write 'fics with. That is, after all, what
such programs are intended for.
Like Richard, I use MS Word as my primary fiction editor. I,
however, use it a little differently to him.
I perform my editing in MS Word with certain "auto-correct" features
turned off (such as ... to an ellipsis character and so forth) and
with all the "auto-format as you type" features turned off. I then
use paragraph styles to write my 'fic in a normal Word manner, with
a font I find eye-pleasing (Book Antiqua if you must know, and a 6
point leader on paragraphs with left-justification), except I avoid
things that do not transfer well to ASCII such as italics and other
font tricks.
When the time comes to send out the 'fic, I take my .doc file and
save-as "MS-DOS Text With Layout (.asc)". This results in a nicely-
formatted file. If I want extra space between my paragraphs, I open
the resulting file as text and do a global search and replace to insert
extra paragraph marks at the start of each new (text) paragraph. I am
able to do this because, unlike Richard, I use indented paragraphs,
which makes identifying the start of a paragraph easy for a global
search and replace. This is the file that goes onto my web page,
and I then cut and paste it into an outgoing mail message.
Shunsuke
-Richard
--
David Eddy - Senior Consultant, Progress Software Melbourne
dje@progress.com
Screening Coordinator and Subbing Bunny, Melbourne Anime Society
My home page is at http://nabiki.newberry.edu/DEddy