From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Computer problems at work
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 00:59:57 -0400

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 12:06 AM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Computer problems at work

[...]
>
> Ted White wrote:
>
[...]
>
> > Files begin as Word files, get saved as plain text and are
> > converted to Total Eclipse files routinely when we proofers
> > begin a  job.
>
> Yes, and those input plain text files look completely different:
> Every paragraph is on just one long line, there are no blank lines,
> there are no footers, there are no line numbers, and there are tabs
> before and after each speaker identification or Q or A.

Isn't it marvelous what Total Eclipse does with that?

But there's a box to click off when saving Word documents as plain text
(.txt) which says something like "save line breaks."  I always check it and
the sample text in the little window rearranges itself accordingly.
(There's another box with something to do with character substitution,
which, since I know nothing about it, I leave unchecked.)

> > As I told you, you inherited Mary Catherine Gallagher's computer --
> > and she'd been having problems with it.  It's probably haunted by
> > her malingering ghost....
>
> If a computer (or house, or person) must be haunted by a ghost, the
> malingering kind is best.  "I'm not going to bother haunting today;
> my ectoplasm has been aching all week."

Yeah, but sooner or later it remembers what it's there for, and you get a
weird Eclipse file.  Not consistently.  Not regularly.  But it *has*
happened.  Mary could do fast, reasonably accurate work when she wished to,
but she spent most of her day surfing the internet, gossiping with other
Beta employees (we all heard all the dramas in her life -- and there were
many), or going out on errands.  It sometimes took her a while to realize
that her machine had a new problem.

--Ted White