Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

I hand-code my HTML and limit it to the listed acceptable codes. (I would never, ever use Word. I've spent too damn much of my time cleaning up for ebooks my clients' HTML code that came out of Word. Billable time, but still the ughhhhhh.) I don't use character entities — those & codes — but the characters themselves. And I use curly quotes, both single and double.

I just checked the upload file for my latest story against what's on SOL. Every instance of a < /i > followed by a right double quote, the latter was changed to a left double quote. Every apostrophe at the start of a word was converted to a left single quote.

Something transformed the text between the upload and the page being served, and in suboptimal ways.

Something transformed the text

The Wizard does transform text.

I submit my docx without curly quotes and the Wizard changes them to curly quotes. I actually like it doing that. That's a good transformation.

It didn't always do that. I did a search with Ma/Fa and sorted by date (ascending) to get the oldest story. It doesn't have curly quotes.

The other stuff sounds like bugs in the transformation process.

What you say is very interesting as I use single and double curly quotes with and without italics, yet I've not had a problem with them since Lazeez changed the code to accept the curly quotes. Many years ago it used to have an issue with them, but hasn't for some years now.

I know the SoL Wizard only accepts a limited set of basic HTML codes, and they nearly all relate to formatting instructions.

The character format codes that I know are accepted are: i b em strong sup hr

The paragraph format codes that I know are accepted are: h3 h4 h5 p blockquote img span

br is also accepted but it's best to warn them in the moderator notes

the codes for text alignment and some font colors are also accepted and are best handled through css code in the file and span commands

I've been avoiding spans and using css (or style attributes) because they're not listed in the instructions. Good to know they work.

spans and using css

I use a very limited css and this is it - with spaces for safety against running as code.

. c { text-align: center }
. red { color: red }
. blue { color: navy }
. green { color: green }

and how I use them in a SoL story file

< p class= "c" >< img src= "https://res.wlpc.com/img/ernestbywater/playball/playball-cover.jpg" alt= "Cover - Baseball field with a baseball in the air" width="580" height="860" >< /p >

< h5 class= "c" >Cover Art< /h5 >

< p >The images are < i >BaseballStadium.jpg< /i > by Bspanberg and
< i >Baseball.png< /i > by Tage Olsin are used with their
permission under Creative Commons Attribution. The
cropping, size adjustment, and text are by Ernest Bywater. All rights
to the cover images are reserved by the copyright owners.< /p >

< p class= "c" >7 April 2021 version< /p >

< p >< span class= "blue" >< i >< b >Note:< /b > UK English is used in
this story, except for dialogue by a US character where US English is
used in the dialogue and some nouns.< /i >< /span >< /p >

< p class= "c" >__________________________________< /p >

< p class= "c" >
< span class= "green" >Chapter 01< /span >< br >
< span class= "blue" >< i >First Game Back< /i >< /span >< br >
< span class= "red" >Epilogue< /span >< /p >

As you can see, it's a very limited css list, but it does make using those items a lot easier. Naturally, what's in the css is limited to what the Wizard already allows as HTML code options. I don't use the span command for the bold or italics as the Wizard will use them as is.

I could also use the left or right paragraph alignments by including them the same way as I do the center, if I wanted to, but I don't.

Then, when formatting the text into html, the quotes are 're-educated'.

Unfortunately, this often results in the 'wrong' quote being used in my stories. It's especially true when I use single quotes for 'internal' quotes (i.e. a quote in a snippet of dialog).

Could we have an option to not use 'smart' quotes for our story displays? I don't ever use typographer's quotes (and use BBEdit's 'straighten quotes' feature to make sure).

Or an option to not adjust quotes at all?

You straighten curly quotes, then re-curl them? That seems ... dicey. (That said, I can only imagine the variety you're seeing submitted.)

I don't know of a way to programmatically distinguish between a opening single-quote and a apostrophe at the start of a word, unless it's already curled correctly. (I've tried and failed to find one.) The curling near end-italics-tag looks like a clear bug, though. If there's no spaces on either side of the end-italics-tag, I can't think of a use-case where left-curl is correct.