Proper formatting for simple text files

[ambiguousbob]

Hello. I enlisted the forum readership's help several months ago, but for various reasons I put on the back burner the actual process of submitting anything here. Now I have returned, and I started going through the submission process for a story - but I found that the rather vanilla text file I wanted to submit (80-characters wide at maximum) was getting line-wrapped.

Yet, when I view stories on the site, they do seem to go the full 80 characters wide.

So, I think I need to beg for some assistance and guidance after all. Probably the short (1600 word) story I am submitting would benefit from an editing pass anyway, if someone would be willing to look at it in that light. But my main question is, if I have an old fashioned vanilla text file of 80 characters per line, how ought it to be changed to look good when it is finally published here at the site?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Athalia]

So, I think I need to beg for some assistance and guidance after all. Probably the short (1600 word) story I am submitting would benefit from an editing pass anyway, if someone would be willing to look at it in that light. But my main question is, if I have an old fashioned vanilla text file of 80 characters per line, how ought it to be changed to look good when it is finally published here at the site?

Thank you in advance.

I write my stories on a Mac using TextEdit, and haven't had issues with line length. You do want to make sure that the program you use is capable of raw text, rather than formatted page text. I think that Notepad on PCs uses just raw text, although you may have to turn "Word Wrap" off to see if it's forcing line lengths. (Maybe somebody familiar with PCs can chime in here.)

 

[hadruprider]

What text editor are you using?

It's irritating that plain text editors are rare these days - most systems seem to have unnecessary over-formatting.
I use google docs for composing, which is not great because it doesn't handle plain text properly - for example when I paste into literotica all my paragraphs come out double spaced so I have to then delete a lot of blank lines.

 

[ElsieElsewhere]

What text editor are you using?

It's irritating that plain text editors are rare these days - most systems seem to have unnecessary over-formatting.
I use google docs for composing, which is not great because it doesn't handle plain text properly - for example when I paste into literotica all my paragraphs come out double spaced so I have to then delete a lot of blank lines.

well that is annoying. i wish i had known that before writing 70 pages on it. is there a way around that issue? like, can i save the text in a specific format and upload it that way?

what would be a better program to use? i really like google docs because it's cloud based. i dont have to worry about losing anything. so i'd prefer something similar, but not as dumb. i also noticed that editing in a specific color is near impossible on google docs because the text will constantly change back to the color of the text that you're editing. you can't simply lock a color and edit. dumb. dumb. dumb. i am developing a love/hate relationship with this stupid app.

 

[ambiguousbob]

I use one of the most ancient text tools of all: Unix VI. It doesn't insert any formatting of its own.

 

[NotWise]

I use one of the most ancient text tools of all: Unix VI. It doesn't insert any formatting of its own.

I like vi (actually vim) but I'm not going to use it to write fiction. Programs yes.

This topic comes up frequently, and a recent reply even came with screen shots of how to configure your word processor. Whatever your word processor is, you configure the paragraph format to add nothing to what you type; no indents, no spaces between paragraphs, nada. Then you type your text with two carriage returns to end each paragraph.

You can cut and paste that text out of your word processor into the submissions page or you can save the whole thing as a plain text file or rich text file and upload it to the submissions page.

You can use HTML tags for bolds, italics and centering if you want. There's a howto on how that's done.

The site uses your raw text and formats an html document from it that is consistent with the site's standards.

Edit: Oh, and if you're using a text editor, let it wrap on the screen where ever it does, but don't touch the return/enter key until you reach the end of the paragraph, then enter twice.

Carriage returns in text files become line breaks in the site's HTML file, so if you put in carriage returns to end the lines then the lines will all be wrapped at the site's page width, then broken where you ended the line.

 

[Writer_Writerson]

I use one of the most ancient text tools of all: Unix VI. It doesn't insert any formatting of its own.

I use Emacs. ;-)

For Windows, how about Notepad++?

 

[NotWise]

what would be a better program to use?

LibreOffice and OpenOffice provide a full-featured word processor, and they're both free. Unfortunately, I don't think either has provided a version for mobile devices.

 

[ElsieElsewhere]

LibreOffice and OpenOffice provide a full-featured word processor, and they're both free. Unfortunately, I don't think either has provided a version for mobile devices.

well, i just want something that is cloud synced.

 

[NotWise]

I use Emacs. ;-)?

That makes you an evolutionary throwback, I think.

I tried learning Emacs when I was young and there were just too many ctrl-* things to remember. Besides, the system discouraged it because it took so much of the available resource. That was at the time when you might have 20 people trying to use a computer that was substantially weaker than a modern tablet.

So I wrote my own editor.

 

[hadruprider]

Elsie, don't be discouraged, I'm sure there is a way to copy and paste from google docs and get plain text formatting.
In fact a quick google gives the answer that you paste with ctrl shift v rather than just ctrl v. I will try that next time.

I also like google docs for the same reason as you, it is in the cloud so it is safe and you can get at it from anywhere.

Interesting that other people are dinosaurs like me using vi and emacs! I use emacs a lot. The control codes are so much faster than using the mouse and menus for things like moving around and saving and searching.

 

[ElsieElsewhere]

Elsie, don't be discouraged, I'm sure there is a way to copy and paste from google docs and get plain text formatting.
In fact a quick google gives the answer that you paste with ctrl shift v rather than just ctrl v. I will try that next time.

I also like google docs for the same reason as you, it is in the cloud so it is safe and you can get at it from anywhere.

Interesting that other people are dinosaurs like me using vi and emacs! I use emacs a lot. The control codes are so much faster than using the mouse and menus for things like moving around and saving and searching.

Hm, I'll try the ctrl+shift+v thing later, thanks. It's whatever, though. I'll fix the formatting of it all if I absolutely have to because I'll have no choice. I did find this service, though. It seems pretty interesting. It has auto-saving to a cloud of your choice, version history logs so you can keep a log of any changes you make, goal functions where it will give you a daily minimum quota to encourage you to write every day. as well as a few other customization options. I think I'll ask for a lifetime membership to it for Christmas.

 

[RabbleVox]

I also like google docs for the same reason as you, it is in the cloud so it is safe and you can get at it from anywhere.

There are lots of reasons to like Google Docs, but please don't for a second believe that being stored "in the cloud", equals safety. It does not. Always keep yer important shit on a clean thumb drive.

"The cloud" doesn't mean God is taking care of it, it means it's on "hopefully" multiple server farms, and if one fails, the other doesn't. But it's still basically dashes and dots stored on a physical medium, somewhere, and there's a hard limit to redundant storage. And they are all vulnerable.

Also, you can't get at Google Docs from about half the world, including Russia, China, and a big chunk of Africa and Asia.

Just sayin,
R

 

[ElsieElsewhere]

There are lots of reasons to like Google Docs, but please don't for a second believe that being stored "in the cloud", equals safety. It does not. Always keep yer important shit on a clean thumb drive.

"The cloud" doesn't mean God is taking care of it, it means it's on "hopefully" multiple server farms, and if one fails, the other doesn't. But it's still basically dashes and dots stored on a physical medium, somewhere, and there's a hard limit to redundant storage. And they are all vulnerable.

Also, you can't get at Google Docs from about half the world, including Russia, China, and a big chunk of Africa and Asia.

Just sayin,
R

I went on vacation to an area that had unreliable internet recently and I was able to set it to work offline, so I had an offline copy. I already know to back it up. Cloud syncing is important because it adds an extra layer to that peace of mind factor. It's an additional feature that I refuse to be without.

 

[hadruprider]

What I am going to do from now on is use google drive with an add-on app called drive notepad, which is just a basic text editor.
It is easy to add it to google drive, via settings, manage apps.
You can set it to 'use by default' so that text files automatically open with drive notepad.
It has various wordwrap options. The only slight downside is that it doesn't autosave so you have to remember to ctrl-s from time to time.
Text from there pastes into lit correctly, whereas from google docs it doesn't (paragraph spacing and quote marks come out wrong).

This topic really should be in the literotica FAQ or a sticky. Lots pf people seem to have trouble.
When I uploaded my lit story I uploaded a .txt file and it was rejected as garbled.

 

[ElsieElsewhere]

What I am going to do from now on is use google drive with an add-on app called drive notepad, which is just a basic text editor.
It is easy to add it to google drive, via settings, manage apps.
You can set it to 'use by default' so that text files automatically open with drive notepad.
It has various wordwrap options. The only slight downside is that it doesn't autosave so you have to remember to ctrl-s from time to time.
Text from there pastes into lit correctly, whereas from google docs it doesn't (paragraph spacing and quote marks come out wrong).

This topic really should be in the literotica FAQ or a sticky. Lots pf people seem to have trouble.
When I uploaded my lit story I uploaded a .txt file and it was rejected as garbled.

rejected as garbled.

please tell me you resubmitted and it was okay. otherwise, kill me now. either way it's fine. i'll put in the effort to format the whole story again if i need to, but it better not come back as "rejected due to being garbled" after i put in the effort to fix it. i'll burn things.

 

[hadruprider]

Sorry Elsie, yes it worked fine in the end. I asked my newbie question on
this thread and the helpful lit community came back with the advice that it is best not to upload a file, just copy and paste into the box.
So I did that and it was OK apart from the minor formatting glitches already mentioned, which were easy to fix as my story is only 2 pages.

(Another thing that really confuses me is that http code works in stories but <b>does not work</b> on the forum, where you have to use vb code. So if I want to write in italics, I have to do it differently in a SRP story than in a submitted lit story!)