Problem with <hr>

[Writer61]

I had three stories go up on the site today. All have a brief note from me at the beginning and the end. These are separated from the rest of the text using the HTML tag <hr>, which should produce a horizontal line across the width of the page.

This is where it gets weird. In one story, the lines appear correctly; in the other two, only the raw tag appears. I have been back to the original .docx files, and there is no difference between the one that works and the others. They are all in the same font, preceded and followed by paragraph marks, and there are no extra characters. The only difference is that the one which works was uploaded about a week before the other two.

Down Under is correct, Entertaining Ruth and French Connection are not.

I have tried three different browsers, with the same result.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Congrats on getting 3 out of the que!
No idea about the html issue.

 

[TheLobster]

So, if I understand correctly, you uploaded a .docx file with a literal <hr> string in it and Lit turned it into a horizontal line?...

Well, that's a bug then, or at least it sounds like it was a bug which has been fixed in between your uploads.

 

[Trionyx]

As with KG, I have no idea about your specific problem but I do have a few random thoughts:
In general, I try to avoid HTML tags other than italics and bold.
I always look at the Preview&Publish screen to see if the tags that I do use are correctly loaded.
Others have found that using lines to separate sections can be buggy, particularly given the different layouts between full computers, pads and phones.
I use five or six dashes or asterisks to separate sections. Remember to hit the space bar once before hitting return when doing this.
Good luck.

 

[Writer61]

So, if I understand correctly, you uploaded a .docx file with a literal <hr> string in it and Lit turned it into a horizontal line?...

Well, that's a bug then, or at least it sounds like it was a bug which has been fixed in between your uploads.

Yes, Lit replaced the literal string in one story, but not the other two. If it is a bug, it's new because the story with it correctly is older than the other two.

I will steer clear of <hr> in future. Sadly, there are five more stories in the queue where I have used it.

 

[TheLobster]

Yes, Lit replaced the literal string in one story, but not the other two. If it is a bug, it's new because the story with it correctly is older than the other two.

I will steer clear of <hr> in future. Sadly, there are five more stories in the queue where I have used it.

I stipulate that it is in fact an old bug, which just so happened to have been fixed recently. Nothing in the text of a .docx file should be interpreted by Lit in any other way than as the literal text of the story, because all the necessary formatting, if any, can be done out of band.

Same should apply to horizontal lines, too, and Word should have a dedicated function for inserting them.

 

[Writer61]

Same should apply to horizontal lines, too, and Word should have a dedicated function for inserting them.

Word does, but Lit ignores it, which is why I wanted to try <hr>.

 

[Actingup]

It sounds like we need more data from other stories being published before we understand what’s going on. Incidentally, a useful recent reference on tags is here (from @FrancesScott). This includes the interesting insight that what you see on the Preview screen does not always match what will be published!

 

[Writer61]

It sounds like we need more data from other stories being published before we understand what’s going on. Incidentally, a useful recent reference on tags is here (from @FrancesScott). This includes the interesting insight that what you see on the Preview screen does not always match what will be published!

Thanks for the link, I consulted that document before uploading and since the incident.

 

[JayHawnee]

That's unfortunately a thing, that probably will never be explained, as there can be multiple factors involved:

• There could be minimal visible differences in the Word-File, that the literotica-converter interpretes different.
• But the Word-files can also look quite messy and different under the hood while showing the same content to the user. Not sure, how good the probably quite old literotica-converter can tackle that.
• There could be changes in the Literotica-Conversion-Process, as there are constant site changes.

What I can see in your published files is, that the working <hr>-tag is not put within it's own <p></p>-tags. So it looks in the code like:

<p>some text </p><p></p><hr><p></p><p>some text</p>

instead of:

<p>some text </p><p>&lt;hr&gt;</p><p>some text</p>

with &lt; and &gt; being the HTML-tags for showing < and >. That's why it fails.

But why it's converted like that? No clue.

 

[Lumiere_Amie]

I don't upload in Word, mainly because I'm on a Mac and I have to convert from Pages. I would not put raw HTML in Word without exporting to a .txt file, or doing a copy/paste directly into the submission box. That's how all my stories get submitted. That way I can preview them and make sure I haven't missed something.

 

[Writer61]

That's unfortunately a thing, that probably will never be explained, as there can be multiple factors involved:

• There could be minimal visible differences in the Word-File, that the literotica-converter interpretes different.
• But the Word-files can also look quite messy and different under the hood while showing the same content to the user. Not sure, how good the probably quite old literotica-converter can tackle that.
• There could be changes in the Literotica-Conversion-Process, as there are constant site changes.

What I can see in your published files is, that the working <hr>-tag is not put within it's own <p></p>-tags. So it looks in the code like:

<p>some text </p><p></p><hr><p></p><p>some text</p>

instead of:

<p>some text </p><p>&lt;hr&gt;</p><p>some text</p>

with &lt; and &gt; being the HTML-tags for showing < and >. That's why it fails.

But why it's converted like that? No clue.

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[alohadave]

But the Word-files can also look quite messy and different under the hood while showing the same content to the user.

The app and web versions of Word will display the same file completely differently, and both are made by Microsoft. It should be no surprised that third party interpretations can munge things up.

 

[old_prof]

These kind of problems (and writing Pages with the additional conversion issues) is why I use the text submission with html tags. I did not think that <hr> was a supported tag on the site. I did not see anyone else mention it here, so I will always recommend @FrancesScott 's excellent How To Format with HTML if you want to understand what html works and what doesn't.

 

[Writer61]

The app and web versions of Word will display the same file completely differently, and both are made by Microsoft. It should be no surprised that third party interpretations can munge things up.

To add to the confusion, I am using the Mac version of Word.

 

[Bamagan]

I had three stories go up on the site today. All have a brief note from me at the beginning and the end. These are separated from the rest of the text using the HTML tag <hr>, which should produce a horizontal line across the width of the page.

This is where it gets weird. In one story, the lines appear correctly; in the other two, only the raw tag appears. I have been back to the original .docx files, and there is no difference between the one that works and the others. They are all in the same font, preceded and followed by paragraph marks, and there are no extra characters. The only difference is that the one which works was uploaded about a week before the other two.

Down Under is correct, Entertaining Ruth and French Connection are not.

I have tried three different browsers, with the same result.

I believe that the site's conversion software tries to strip out most html formatting aside from the codes they intentionally support, but Laurel apparently sometimes restores the original codes. I presume that's dependent on her noticing the instances and having the time and inclination to correct the issue. For a while I used to use the old i and b codes, and noticed that she sometimes changed them to em and strong, as the site has expressed a preference for those, so I know she makes adjustments at least some of the time. I'm guessing she may have noticed the horizontal line in the one story and didn't mind putting it back, but perhaps the other two got less careful scrutiny, or maybe she was ready to take a break when they came up in her queue and didn't feel like fixing them.

 

[FrancesScott]

@Actingup and @iwatchus thank you for your continued support of my little essay.

 

[Actingup]

I believe that the site's conversion software tries to strip out most html formatting aside from the codes they intentionally support, but Laurel apparently sometimes restores the original codes. I presume that's dependent on her noticing the instances and having the time and inclination to correct the issue. For a while I used to use the old i and b codes, and noticed that she sometimes changed them to em and strong, as the site has expressed a preference for those, so I know she makes adjustments at least some of the time. I'm guessing she may have noticed the horizontal line in the one story and didn't mind putting it back, but perhaps the other two got less careful scrutiny, or maybe she was ready to take a break when they came up in her queue and didn't feel like fixing them.

That makes sense to me, in a bizarre 'I can't believe that she would consider doing manual coding interventions with everything else going on' kind of way! Like @iwatchus, I use text submission with html tags. My standard dividers are:

<hr> (for start and end of story, following preface and before afterword)
and
<p align="center">~ ~ ~ ~ ~ </p> (chapter dividers - I pinched this from somebody else - it just gives a line of five tildes centred on the page, which is a nice format).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~​

I use a macro converter for em, strong and other standard converstions, although it can give messy results and sometimes needs manual intervention.

 

[Britva415]

I did not think that <hr> was a supported tag on the site.

The FAQ says it is:

https://www.literotica.com/faq/publishing/publishing-text-formatting

I wouldn't encourage anyone to use it (I've never seen a story--digital, print or otherwise--which really needed a line), but if someone felt they had to, there's apparently support for it.

 

[Actingup]

The FAQ says it is:

https://www.literotica.com/faq/publishing/publishing-text-formatting

I wouldn't encourage anyone to use it (I've never seen a story--digital, print or otherwise--which really needed a line), but if they felt they had to, there's apparently support for it.

From Frances' essay:

Horizontal Rule

Divide and conquer, right? Here is an example of an unpaired tag:

<hr>

which gets you:

---

This tag used to support parameters - like how wide the rule is meant to be - but these have been deprecated in favor of CSS. However, Literotica still supports them, which means that you can use:

<div align="center"><hr width="20%"></div>

which gives you a nice divider:

---

one that I often use in my stories.

Please note that this only works using the - also deprecated - <div> and not with <p>.

 

[old_prof]

My bad on <hr>. I was remembering it being in the list of unsupported. I need to check my facts before posting.

 

[Actingup]

My bad on <hr>. I was remembering it being in the list of unsupported. I need to check my facts before posting.

Facts? Since when did that hold back any of us here??? You're showing your academic roots

 

[FrancesScott]

If you are going to manually tag your story - which gives you much greater control, in my opinion - then I’d highly recommend copying the text and pasting it into the submission text box. Uploading a Word file with HTML tags is asking for trouble.

 

[Actingup]

If you are going to manually tag your story - which gives you much greater control, in my opinion - then I’d highly recommend copying the text and pasting it into the submission text box. Uploading a Word file with HTML tags is asking for trouble.

Yep. I haven't tried the uploading a Word File method - I've only copied and pasted.

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

I've used the hr tag for horizontal dividers in nearly all of my stories and never had an issue with it. But I always paste directly into the text submission box (not uploading a file).

I've found it's easier to include than other types of dividers and I can type it more consistently on my phone than trying to use asterisks and centre them etc.