Forum: Author Hangout

so I suspected a trend that might not be there.

You can put a large part the issue down to me. I had a close look at what is accepted in the way of HTML tags by the submission wizard, and compared it to what the tagged text codes allows, (edit add) and I use.

italic < i >

bold < b >

bold-italic < b >< i >

emphasize < em >

strong < strong >

superscript < sup >

blockquote < blockquote >

horizontal rules < hr >

H3, H4 and H5 header tags < h3 > < h4 > < h5 >

The tagged text allows a few extra things like the use of the font colours of red, blue, and green, it also lists, paragraph commands with alignments, and the br command for a single line feed, so I asked if they could be added to the approved list. He responded that the system does recognise the < b r>, < p >, < / p >, < p align = " center " > commands already, they're just not listed on the formatting instruction page. Also, the commands < font color = " xxx" > are accepted by the wizard as long as the xxx is either red, blue, or green - not a hexdecimal code or any other colour.

Since I no longer use the blockquote command at SoL, due to the way it's now processed by the wizard not suiting how I want it to look, I change that code in the tagged text to be in blue italics. By changing the blockquote to be blue italics in html and swapping my h1, h2, h3 headings to be h3, h4, h5 my cleaned up html code will be properly processed by the wizard, since it accepts everything else I use.

So I submitted a revised No Names - No Pack Drill using only html code, but it caused a major problem with the wizard. First it discovered an issue in the code for converting the font colour, then it crashed due to me having some errors in the code (faulty tags). That delayed everything for over 24 hours while Lazeez corrected the code for handling the font colour.

In the end, sorting out the changes I wanted, the code, and my mistakes the whole submission queue got held up for almost two days due to me. Thus you can blame me and not Lazeez. However, the end result is I can now prepare a file for posting much faster in the html code, and the wizard can process it faster with less work by the moderator, now. It also adds a new capability to the accepted html code. Not sure if, or when. Lazeez will be updating the page with the list of acceptable html code.

edit to add: The only tagged text command I use now is when re-posting a multi-chapter story I add in the partition command of { p }Chapter xx to indicate where the SoL posting chapter changes are.

The the above have now been tested and work.

As far as coding issues, I prefer the simplicity of the "markdown" (nnn.md.txt) submission, and the results (with attention to a short-lived glitch) have been quite good. I do enjoy all the improvements Lazeez has made to give the site appearance so much more flexibility.

Since I post to several sites, including my own website and publish using ePubs (which also use html commands) I prefer the html submissions since it makes everything easier to manage (one central source instead of several).

I also utilize the { p } command to help Lazeez, working with html instead of a new source I don't use anywhere else is advantageous, plus WORD and OpenOffice automatically convert to html, while markdown generally has to be coded by hand, which again takes more time.

Ernest, we should talk about your workaround for the < blockquote > and using < h3 > and < h4 > as substitutes for < h1 > and < h2 >, as that might be a better way for me to go.

For those of you not so anal about their submission formatting, please kindly ignore the ravings of the rest of us. :)

@Lazeez

I delayed few things on ScifiStories on purpose because they wouldn't show up as updates if I processed them when they were submitted. If you submit a story today and you submit an update right after it's posted, if the update is processed right away it doesn't get listed in the updates page.

I can appreciate that, and it's useful to know. What it means is that I can't expect to submit stories mid-day (as I tried to do when moving my older stories from one site to the other).

I'm also not trying to overly increase your workload, just understand what's involved so I'll better understand when and how to make submissions (generally, each site has their own unspoken rules which have to be parsed out over time).

No, the work done on the wizard and the posting scripts didn't delay posts in the queue.

Well, it delayed the story I had in the queue, which is what I based my comments on.

edit to add: understandable and mostly my fault.

I'll admit, in order to get the maximum number of downloads, I'll stay up until 12:30 (after Lazeez heads home), so my posts are at the front of the list the next morning when he gets started again. Last night, I was exhausted (still recovering from my new pacemaker) so I crashed and posted the story to be posted automatically. Guess what, it didn't show up! (If I post the story at 12:30 a.m., the story will appear around 8. If I post it at 8:30 or 9, it won't show up until 4 in the afternoon!).

Since my readers expect me to post on a particular night each week, I prefer having my stories easily accessible on that day, rather than being shuffled off the 'recent updates' list. But that explains my confusion, made worse by the one-day delay on the new scifistories site.

There's a whole science to when and what days to post. Luckily, few can be bothered worrying about such trivia. 'D

I think it's interesting to note my humble offering has accumulated a complete set of scores in a total of only 26 votes :)

I think it's interesting that scifistories has NO 'top rated stories' yet, as none have gotten enough votes to earn any scores.

Read your post, so I read the story. Don't know why it is rated so low, I thought it was good. Must be a lot of Anglophiles in your audience.

Thank you for the kind words.

I assume all the 1 votes (the mode) are from Americans. Based on the stories I've read here, they hold the British Royal Family in far greater esteem than most Brits.

AJ

Isn't it always that way. We crucify our President (i.e. our royalty) and pay homage to yours. Of course, I doubt the people of any country care for our President regardless of who is living in the White House. Just the way the cookie crumbles.

Good but there have been better

That's for sure. 'In your face' humour isn't one of my strengths.

I've just discovered the 'royalty' tag. I'll add it to the story. I'd be interested to know just how many stories use it, if a premier member wouldn't mind obliging.

AJ

I got 35 on a category search.

Thank you, kind sir. That's more than I expected because I expected other authors to be as unobservant as myself.

AJ

I'd be interested to know just how many stories use it,

Using tags is very helpful when looking for a story, however, not all tags have been around since SoL started. Thus, you usually only see some tags on stories written since the tag was introduced or where the author noted the new tag and went in to adjust the entry to include the new tag.

In short, don't assume any one tag is on every story that should have it.

Cold Creek doesn't use it for the Defenceman series.

AJ

Good point. From recent discussions here it seems conservatism is the name of the game when using story codes, and only major themes and potential squicks should be identified.

Purely from the boggle of mind angle, I wonder who might find royalty a squick?

AJ

I wonder who might find royalty a squick?

Bolsheviks, Communists, and French revolutionaries.

How many US founders read SOL nowadays? :)

I guess your second point eliminates the possibility of, "Arise, Sir Barack!"

AJ

Cold Creek doesn't use it for the Defenceman series.

It's not a significant part of most of the story, although I suppose he should use it in the later part.

I'd be interested to know just how many stories use it

The majority of the Clan Amir stories revolve around members of a royal family, but in most of the stories the royal connection is a minor thing, at best, thus only the stories where it's a major aspect of the story do I tag it as royalty. You need to assess the relevance of any tag to the story.