Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 00:06:32 -0500 (EST)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: The December 2003 WSFA Journal is available online
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Rich Lynch <rw_lynch at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Somewhat better, but some fix-up would still be helpful.

Once I got the hardcopy, I saw that the poem was intended to be in
groups of five lines.  Fixed.

> Paragraph indents are excessive and inconsistent.  Line spacings
> and font faces are also inconsistent from article to article.
> Everything is right-justified; from a personal viewpoint, I find
> on-screen text a lot easier to read if it isn't right justified.

Is this true of all the 2003 online Journals, or just the last one?

Sam uses some Microsoft software that generates some truly horrible
looking HTML.  I clean up what I can, but a lot of it I have no idea
what it does, so I leave it alone.  Since mine is a text-only account,
I can't really tell what the graphics or the variant fonts look like.
Also, I don't have the hardcopy Journal to work from until after the
meeting.  Until then, I don't know quite what the Journal is supposed
to look like.

(Does anyone know what "MsoNormal" means?  It's not part of the
official HTML spec, but it appears over fifteen *thousand* times in
the online WSFA Journals, often several times per line of text.)

The old Journals I've been putting online are done completely
differently.  I start with the hardcopy Journal.  My brother scans in
the text.  I then fix any scanner errors and any non-deliberate typos,
turning them into clean bare ASCII text, and then hand-code HTML which
I think will make it look, to all browsers, as much like the original
as possible (e.g. centering, bold, underline, larger vs. smaller text,
etc.).

Which do most of you think looks better online, in terms of layout and
presentation?  The old Journals or the new ones?  Thanks.

I've sometimes been tempted to tear out all the HTML from the newer
Journals, reducing them to clean bare text, and recode all the HTML.
But this would certainly lose some of the effects Sam deliberately
puts in.  I assume the variation of fonts from one article to the next
is deliberate on his part, as is the paragraph indentation, etc.  With
the old Journals I just use bare paragraph tags, so your browser
should use whatever indent and layout you've chosen as a default based
on whatever is most comfortable for you to read.  Sam (or perhaps his
software) usually chooses to override your preferences, in an attempt
to make it look as much like the hardcopy as possible, at least if you
happen to be running a Microsoft browser.  I'm not sure how successful
this is.  For instance, are the "excessive and inconsistent" indents
the same as in the hardcopy Journal?

Thanks in advance for everyone's feedback.
--
Keith F. Lynch - kfl at keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
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