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Problems with stories

oldegrump ๐Ÿšซ

I have been rereading several stories, and have found several chapters and paragraphs being broken up by parts of the story repeating.

A new story "Second That Emotion" Has the same problem in chapter 39

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)
Updated:

@oldegrump

I have been rereading several stories, and have found several chapters and paragraphs being broken up by parts of the story repeating.

It happens sometime when a memory corruption error happens in our processing software.

A new story "Second That Emotion" Has the same problem in chapter 39

I pulled the original submission from our archives and compared it with what's on the site and the contents are identical. So, this is actually how the author submitted that particular chapter.

Try checking it after you reboot your system. I've seen such weird things happen when a system's memory get corrupted which can be cured only with a reboot.

by the way, Chapter 39 of 'Second that Emotion' by 'Latikia' was posted on September 18, 2006, a bit over 10 years now, so I wouldn't call it 'new'.

Vincent Berg ๐Ÿšซ

It's not unusual, when you're posting stories multiple times every week, including updates and minor corrections, to mistakenly post the wrong chapter. Worse, few authors would ever know unless someone actually speaks up and complains. Because of the delay in submitting and the actual posting, it's difficult to verify that the correct chapter posted. When you mode a two word modification to several different chapters, you rarely bother checking.

I've done it a couple times, luckily my readers are pretty good about calling my attention to it. I suspect, for authors who are receptive to feedback, the readers just sigh and continue reading, trying to guess what was in the missing chapter. :(

ASSTR readers aren't nearly as helpful. I had a couple mishaps, where entire chapters were utterly unreadable due to character set misidentification (trying to display foreign languages in a file format that doesn't support it). I never knew the files were unreadable until weeks later, because out of 3,000 to 6,000 readers, no one ever bothered to mention they couldn't read the story. That's why I no longer bother posting to ASSTR.

If my stories mean so little to them, why bother? :(

Ernest Bywater ๐Ÿšซ
Updated:

@oldegrump

I have been rereading several stories, and have found several chapters and paragraphs being broken up by parts of the story repeating.

The same issue is in the middle of chapter 23 of A Charmed Life - the ice rink scene is repeated after the start of the next scene. Edit to add: it happens again at the end of chapter 25- and chapter 27

http://finestories.com/s/10527:8245

Also, a significant part of the story revolves around his military service, but the Military Tag isn't listed.

REP ๐Ÿšซ

@oldegrump

several chapters and paragraphs being broken up by parts of the story repeating.

I received a comment from one of my readers about some text in one of my posted chapters. I confirmed the text in the posted chapter. When I checked the 'MS WORD' html that I submitted the text was not present.

I started using 'Word' at work in the 80's. I learned that it can cause some strange things to happen. One of the things I learned was Word links (may not be proper term) the document structure, all edits, etc., to the final paragraph in the document.

The only thing I could determine was Word embedded a non-displayable something containing text that I had deleted in the html I submitted. The algorithm used to format the submission extracted that text and displayed it as part of my chapter. Something similar may be happening to other writer submissions.

Replies:   Ernest Bywater
Ernest Bywater ๐Ÿšซ

@REP

I learned was Word links (may not be proper term) the document structure, all edits, etc., to the final paragraph in the document.

I'm not sure about the last couple of versions of Word, but one thing I learned way back when I first use MS Word on a DOS system (and it was on every version of Word for Windows up to 2012) was the way it tracked changed by having the original version of the document then add a note to the end of the file where the change was made, who made it, when, and what the change was. The file kept that list for every damn change to the document. This is the MS Word Fast Save feature, because it only saves the changes onto the end of the file. However, this causes the file size to grow. There is a setting where you can turn Fast Save off, this usually loses all the change tracking information, but it will save only the final version of the file as one single continuous file.

When I was in college another student was bitching about their ten page text document being nearly 2 MB in size an not fitting on their 1.44 MB disc. I checked the file for them, turned Fast Save off on the computer lab computer, then saved the file for them, only a few KB. It seems they'd been working on it and changing it for several months because it was the major assignment for the year, and it had so many changes it wasn't funny.

Replies:   Vincent Berg  REP
Vincent Berg ๐Ÿšซ

@Ernest Bywater

When I was in college another student was bitching about their ten page text document being nearly 2 MB in size an not fitting on their 1.44 MB disc. I checked the file for them, turned Fast Save off on the computer lab computer, then saved the file for them, only a few KB. It seems they'd been working on it and changing it for several months because it was the major assignment for the year, and it had so many changes it wasn't funny.

In most cases, there are few reasons for authors to need such services (i.e. they don't need to save edits between editors, not that they wouldn't be hurt to lose the last two hours worth of changes). Generally, authors incorporate the edits of each editor individually, rather than letting everyone hack at their document at once.

In the end, it's the author who makes changes, rather than the story being a committee project, with equal partners all around.

REP ๐Ÿšซ

@Ernest Bywater

I wasn't aware of the fast save feature or that it could be turned off.

The way I learned about everything being store with that last paragraph was one of my chapter files became corrupted; cause unknown. As I paged down through the file, I would reach a point where the computer locked up. Only way to fix it was to reboot the computer then in the file, go directly to end of file and add several blank paragraphs. Copy all of corrupted file except last paragraph and paste in a new file.

The main problem was all of the documents structure and formatting was save with that last paragraph. Some of my chapters were 100+ pages with text formatted using a style sheet, multilevel paragraph structure, and multiple cross-references to tables, figures, and other paragraph numbers. Thus I had to reformat all of the text and reinsert the references. About 6 hours of time.

Replies:   Ernest Bywater
Ernest Bywater ๐Ÿšซ

@REP

I wasn't aware of the fast save feature or that it could be turned off.

I forget how you change this setting in the Windows version of Word, but my old Word 1 manual has the keyboard commands to change it as:

1. Choose File Save As (Alt,F,A).
2. Choose Options (Alt+O).
3.Select Fast Save (Alt+S), then Choose OK.

From that I think it just toggles between them. It also has this to say about it:

Fast Save: Turn on to save only changes made since the last save, when possible. Turn off to do a full save.

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