Special characters and HTML convertion

[Guest]

Hiya,

I've noticed that when I write the story up in MS Word and then cut'n'paste into the textarea box that the default "smart" quotes produced by Word get converted into their HTML special character code (eg &1234 and clutter up the page. Can this be sorted out?

 

[juicygirl]

Good question

If you are talking chyoo stories though, why do you need to do it in ms word? I am sorry that I don't know the answer though. If you are the same Sixth that I know, you certainly write well though, so I look forward to your stories.

 

[zetacon4]

Hiya,

I've noticed that when I write the story up in MS Word and then cut'n'paste into the textarea box that the default "smart" quotes produced by Word get converted into their HTML special character code (eg &1234 and clutter up the page. Can this be sorted out?

Can you eliminate the problem? Not really. The wrinkle in the situation comes from the way this website converts your text preparing it for posting as a webpage. You might try to do a global find and replace of all those quotes with a single quote character. Try some as an experiment and see what character seems to work the best. See, double quotes are used to deliniate values for tag properties in the HTML page coding. So a new way of telling the browser to display the quote character was needed.
Long story short - you can't paste them into normal text as the software stands at present. It doesn't know how to manage them.
Frank (website designer)

 

[Sixth]

Re: Re: Special characters and HTML convertion

Can you eliminate the problem? Not really. The wrinkle in the situation comes from the way this website converts your text preparing it for posting as a webpage.

Right. The problem's that MS Word turns these special characters into their uni-code values whereas the textarea only deals with ascii. If it was php I'd use:

$unicode_array = array(
		"–" => "-",
		"—" => "-",
		"–" => "-",
		"‘" => "'",
		"’" => "'",
		"’" => "'",
		"‘" => "'",
		"…" => "...",
		"…" => "...",
		"“" => "\"",
		"“" => "\"",
		"”" => "\"",
		"”" => "\"",
	);

in a strtr() function to convert the code. I don't mean to preach though. I'm aware there's probably a whole host of factors that I'm not aware of which means this method won't work.

 

[zetacon4]

Re: Re: Re: Special characters and HTML convertion

Right. The problem's that MS Word turns these special characters into their uni-code values whereas the textarea only deals with ascii. ....

I'm aware there's probably a whole host of factors that I'm not aware of which means this method won't work.

You most definitely have the right idea. It is a limitation of the conversion that takes place with this websites programming. Not your ability to provide the correct input.

Someone mentioned you have written stories? Are they posted here on Lit.? If so, I would like to read them. I have several that I am currently refining to submit here. Would love to talk shop as writers if you like.
Frank

 

[Sixth]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Special characters and HTML convertion

Someone mentioned you have written stories? Are they posted here on Lit.? If so, I would like to read them. I have several that I am currently refining to submit here. Would love to talk shop as writers if you like.
Frank

Ah. Well. Nearly. Kinda.

I have posted a few pages to interactive stories founded by others on Chyoo. There's
http://www.chyoo.com/dx/?dx=c&story_id=510 and
http://www.chyoo.com/dx/?dx=c&story_id=493

I currenly wait the approval of my own interactive story to edit, it's been submitted to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section. In the meanwhile I have time to kill and so pester these forums! I'm not up to writing whole stories, I guess my reliance on the spell checking MS Word was clue to that but perhaps one day after I've won the lottery I'll be able to give it a shot.

 

[zetacon4]

Hey Sixth...

I use Word too, and just cut and paste the text into the submission text box. That way I get all the tools needed to do the job and can easily post the story just as plain text.

Go ahead and try one. It sure is fun. I have written one about a girl who is a member here. She made it a lot of fun to try to get her personality into the story. I used as much of her actual events and details as I could. It was a blast. I will submit it this coming week.

 

[Sixth]

I think the special characters have been sorted out. At least, when I post new pages straight into my story (see profile) then the smart "curly" quotes are there.

 

[zetacon4]

Hey, pretty nice work so far!!!!

I think the special characters have been sorted out. At least, when I post new pages straight into my story (see profile) then the smart "curly" quotes are there.

Seems you have the writing problems straightened out. Great.
I like your style. Would like more chapters. Thanks!