Another new bug

[AwkwardMD]

Editing the story doesn't actually fix anything, because the actual problem is not within the story. The bug has a very specific trigger, and the page displays correctly outside of that one circumstance. So, once again, the problem is not within the story, but within the site's code.

Bugs in the code can only be fixed by fixing the buggy code.

Anything we do is just putting a bandage on the wound.

Your underlying assumption that we can control how our story looks is wrong.

"I want my story to display in comic sans"
Not possible

"I want this story to display in night mode, white text on a black background"
Not possible

"I want to use different fonts for the different characters, to emphasize their personalities"
Not possible

We all already make concessions we don't consider about what we will accept our published works to look like. None of it is sacred, and Lit makes no promises about maintaining any stylistic element. Insisting that formatting choices are even in the same galaxy as the creative choices we make in our work is making a mountain out of a mole hill.

We have no control. Welcome to the party.

 

[PennyThompson]

Your underlying assumption that we can control how our story looks is wrong.

"I want my story to display in comic sans"
Not possible

"I want this story to display in night mode, white text on a black background"
Not possible

"I want to use different fonts for the different characters, to emphasize their personalities"
Not possible

We all already make concessions we don't consider about what we will accept our published works to look like. None of it is sacred, and Lit makes no promises about maintaining any stylistic element. Insisting that formatting choices are even in the same galaxy as the creative choices we make in our work is making a mountain out of a mole hill.

We have no control. Welcome to the party.

On the one hand, from a W3C perspective this is the correct take for text content. Stick to standard HTML structural tags, and let any site, browser, or user change the formatting to meet their individual needs.

On the other hand, Lit doesn't actually follow W3C HTML guidelines consistently, so best practice isn't actually reliable here

So our options are to try and divinate how their archaic rendering schema works and hope they don't break it, or just submit completely unformatted plain text like the heathen kings of old

 

[MillieDynamite]

Others before me, I'm certain of this. Better it might be if on a pedestal they put, but fall will hurt when tumbled I do.

Surely they'll make an exception for you, Millie.

 

[AwkwardMD]

On the one hand, from a W3C perspective this is the correct take for text content. Stick to standard HTML structural tags, and let any site, browser, or user change the formatting to meet their individual needs.

On the other hand, Lit doesn't actually follow W3C HTML guidelines consistently, so best practice isn't actually reliable here

So our options are to try and divinate how their archaic rendering schema works and hope they don't break it, or just submit completely unformatted plain text like the heathen kings of old

If it was good enough for Boudicca, it's good enough for me!

 

[AwkwardMD]

On the one hand, from a W3C perspective this is the correct take for text content. Stick to standard HTML structural tags, and let any site, browser, or user change the formatting to meet their individual needs.

On the other hand, Lit doesn't actually follow W3C HTML guidelines consistently, so best practice isn't actually reliable here

So our options are to try and divinate how their archaic rendering schema works and hope they don't break it, or just submit completely unformatted plain text like the heathen kings of old

Truly I am waaaay out of my depth with these things. All I know is that I surrendered a lot of creative control to publish on Lit, as compared to the site I had previously published on, and that letting go was very freeing.

 

[YmaOHyd]

submit completely unformatted plain text like the heathen kings of old

Easy there Denethor

 

[iwatchus]

Two levels here for me. What I am not willing to cede is changing the text of the story, including losing section breaks. This is a hard line for me and I hope it would be for almost any writer. If they want to give me a tag for section breaks and choose how to render it, that's different. (As long as they render something.)

On a second level, I would like some control over the appearance. I would like to know that text I expected to be italicized no longer is. This is more about predictability. Tell me what you are going to do to render it and warn me when it will change. The appearance does impact how readers react to the piece. It is important. But I understand that publishing here cedes ultimate control over this to the site.

 

[crookedletter]

Two levels here for me. What I am not willing to cede is changing the text of the story, including losing section breaks. This is a hard line for me and I hope it would be for almost any writer. If they want to give me a tag for section breaks and choose how to render it, that's different. (As long as they render something.)

On a second level, I would like some control over the appearance. I would like to know that text I expected to be italicized no longer is. This is more about predictability. Tell me what you are going to do to render it and warn me when it will change. The appearance does impact how readers react to the piece. It is important. But I understand that publishing here cedes ultimate control over this to the site.

Possible this has been discussed already, but have you tried uploading a word processor document? I haven't had any issues with basic formatting that way. The only exception would be an in-story poem/song that didn't retain its soft/hard returns, but I think I could have worked out a way to do that had I tried harder.

 

[IWroteThis]

Your underlying assumption that we can control how our story looks is wrong.

"I want my story to display in comic sans"
Not possible

"I want this story to display in night mode, white text on a black background"
Not possible

"I want to use different fonts for the different characters, to emphasize their personalities"
Not possible

We all already make concessions we don't consider about what we will accept our published works to look like. None of it is sacred, and Lit makes no promises about maintaining any stylistic element. Insisting that formatting choices are even in the same galaxy as the creative choices we make in our work is making a mountain out of a mole hill.

We have no control. Welcome to the party.

You underlying assumption that you understood my assumptions is wrong. Heck, your assuming they were assumptions was wrong, as I tested and confirmed what I said.

Once again, the issue only happens in one specific circumstance. Even the simple act of reloading the page displays the page properly. So, despite your protestations, this is not about trying to apply a control that is not allowed. This is a bug in one specific function of the site.

 

[TheLobster]

Stick to standard HTML structural tags, and let any site, browser, or user change the formatting to meet their individual needs.

Gee, I would love if we could use <article> for chapters, <section> for scenes, <h1-6> for headers, and just let the rendering sort it out.

You could even let readers pick themes for how the stories are rendered!
With old-fashioned or modern dinkuses, and different fonts and everything!
And as an author you could write in Markdown, and just convert it to this awesome standard HTML!

...oh, that's such a beautiful fantasy...

*clears throat and puts hand back on the desk*

Uhm, yeah, so what where we talking about?

 

[iwatchus]

Possible this has been discussed already, but have you tried uploading a word processor document? I haven't had any issues with basic formatting that way. The only exception would be an in-story poem/song that didn't retain its soft/hard returns, but I think I could have worked out a way to do that had I tried harder.

Some centered lines can disappear. It's reproducible but seemingly random case by case, Reloading the page fixes them. Mine was uploaded as plain text with html tags but people above have reported the same issue with documents uploaded as .docx. I'm unaware of any rtf originated stories displaying this, but I suspect they do as well.

 

[AwkwardMD]

You underlying assumption that you understood my assumptions is wrong. Heck, your assuming they were assumptions was wrong, as I tested and confirmed what I said.

Once again, the issue only happens in one specific circumstance. Even the simple act of reloading the page displays the page properly. So, despite your protestations, this is not about trying to apply a control that is not allowed. This is a bug in one specific function of the site.

Okay

 

[onehitwanda]

Gee, I would love if we could use <article> for chapters, <section> for scenes, <h1-6> for headers, and just let the rendering sort it out.

You could even let readers pick themes for how the stories are rendered!
With old-fashioned or modern dinkuses, and different fonts and everything!
And as an author you could write in Markdown, and just convert it to this awesome standard HTML!

...oh, that's such a beautiful fantasy...

Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way.

Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.

Pippin: What? Gandalf? See what?

Gandalf: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.

Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad.

Gandalf: No. No, it isn't.

 

[cw5523729]

Your underlying assumption that we can control how our story looks is wrong.

"I want my story to display in comic sans"
Not possible

Thank God. I don't know if it qualifies as kink shaming to belittle a lover of Comic Sans but I feel like an exception needs to be made for blatant crimes against humanity.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way.

Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.

Pippin: What? Gandalf? See what?

Gandalf: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.

Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad.

Gandalf: No. No, it isn't.

[Ilmare pokes her head over the parapet]
Sorry guys, the <sunrise> tag isn't working right now. Gloom of Morgoth until we can get it working again.

 

[IWroteThis]

So, I took another look at the HTML source file. The story text is actually in there twice. The section where the < is replaced with \x3C is not what is being used by the browser. I missed it the first time, but that section doesn't have the paragraph tags added.

The second instance of the story, which does have the <p> and </p> that I see when I use the Inspect feature of my browser, so I'm sure that's the one it's using. That section does have all of the expected < symbols.

The code that is displayed when I do View Source did not match what Inspect was showing me, but the Debugger said I had to reload the page. After the reload, Inspect showed me the same code as I got with View Source, so it seems to be confirmed that it's a bug in what is sent when you click on the next page link as opposed to opening it any other way. Copying the link and pasting it into the URL bar displays the page correctly. I did notice that even when clicking on the link to the first page, it always loads correctly.

So, it's only the links that have ?page= in them that trigger the bug, and only if clicked on directly.

I realize I may not have made one point clear, so allow me to rectify that.

While the omission of centered scene breaks is what everybody is focused on, and what is the most obvious, that is not the only difference in what the server is sending to the browser.

Since View Source pulls the correct version of the page, the only way to see the source code for the buggy page is to use the Inspect tool. If you compare the results of Inspect to what you get from View Source, or from using Inspect after reloading the page, you will find there are a lot of differences in the HTML. I didn't go through the whole page, and what else I found did not visibly change the page, but I found that there are a lot of differences between the two sets of code for the same page.

So, to reiterate, this is a site bug in the code, with a specific trigger, that is bigger than one display element.

 

[IWroteThis]

Some centered lines can disappear. It's reproducible but seemingly random case by case, Reloading the page fixes them. Mine was uploaded as plain text with html tags but people above have reported the same issue with documents uploaded as .docx. I'm unaware of any rtf originated stories displaying this, but I suspect they do as well.

In my testing, there is nothing random about it. If you directly click on a link that ends in ?page=# you will get the buggy version of the page. If you reload the page, View Source, Open Link in New Tab, Open Link in New Window, or copy and paste the address into the URL bar, you get the correct page. I think the only thing I didn't test was opening it from a bookmark, but I suspect it will give you the correct version.

 

[iwatchus]

In my testing, there is nothing random about it. If you directly click on a link that ends in ?page=# you will get the buggy version of the page. If you reload the page, View Source, Open Link in New Tab, Open Link in New Window, or copy and paste the address into the URL bar, you get the correct page. I think the only thing I didn't test was opening it from a bookmark, but I suspect it will give you the correct version.

The apparent randomness is that some of the centers still get displayed in the buggy form. Which ones get displayed is consistent, so it is not truly random, just based on variables which are not immediately obvious.

 

[PennyThompson]

Thank God. I don't know if it qualifies as kink shaming to belittle a lover of Comic Sans but I feel like an exception needs to be made for blatant crimes against humanity.

Comic Sans is actually a preferred font for some people with dyslexia, because the spacing and character shapes make it easier to differentiate letters!

 

[RocketGrunt]

On the one hand, from a W3C perspective this is the correct take for text content. Stick to standard HTML structural tags, and let any site, browser, or user change the formatting to meet their individual needs.

On the other hand, Lit doesn't actually follow W3C HTML guidelines consistently, so best practice isn't actually reliable here

So our options are to try and divinate how their archaic rendering schema works and hope they don't break it, or just submit completely unformatted plain text like the heathen kings of old

Submitting unformatted text actually doesn't work. Literotica automatically purges your white space and automatically puts white space between your paragraphs. It creates some formatting, and there's a range of document editor formatting that it's supposed to recognize. The problem is that right now it's purging some actual text intermittently because of a bug. Depending on what you have written, it can be swallowing whole paragraphs.

 

[IWroteThis]

The apparent randomness is that some of the centers still get displayed in the buggy form. Which ones get displayed is consistent, so it is not truly random, just based on variables which are not immediately obvious.

Do you have an example page with ones that are displayed? Does it have some there and some missing? I'd be curious to see it.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Do you have an example page with ones that are displayed? Does it have some there and some missing? I'd be curious to see it.

https://www.literotica.com/s/fighting-them-there-ch-24?page=2

If you go to page 2 via the page jump, the scene break before "How close am I to advancing?" is hidden, and the scene break before "The Winter Feast" is not.

 

[IWroteThis]

https://www.literotica.com/s/fighting-them-there-ch-24?page=2

If you go to page 2 via the page jump, the scene break before "How close am I to advancing?" is hidden, and the scene break before "The Winter Feast" is not.

That is interesting.

In the buggy version, there is a paragraph for the two missing scene breaks, but they are empty. One thing that is different is that the paragraphs where the scene breaks should be have <p data-hk="a really long number"></p> while none of the other paragraphs have the "data-hk". However, in the correct version of the story, every paragraph except the scene breaks has a data-hk value in the p tag.

That said, I can find no discernible reason why the third scene break appears.

The one thing I did notice was that this story used <p align="center"> rather than <center>, so the bug seems to be an issue with centering rather than the center tag specifically.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Do you have an example page with ones that are displayed? Does it have some there and some missing? I'd be curious to see it.

When I looked at the story that this thread was originally about (and which fortunately has now been corrected), I counted three centered section breaks on the first page. Those should display correctly. On pages 2-8, there were 40 more, and six of them displayed right. Earlier in the thread I have a page-by-page breakdown.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

we need @KittyOfSteele-as-a-service

Senpai, are you asking me a private cam show?