MS-office HTML-generator

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Hi...
I realized that I can use MS-Word to save my stories as html-files. Does anyone here have some experience with doing that and posting the stories on this site?

I wonder if I can just copy the source code into the story field, or if I need to change something.

I hope you can help me with further information,

Beyogi

Don't do it

Word's version of HTML - even filtered - contains a lot of junk that you really don't want.

I actually use Dreamweaver to tidy Word stuff up. Don't get me wrong, Word's great for spell checking and to a certain extent, grammar too, but as far as HTML, forget it.

In all honesty, you should really only be using strong (bold), Em (italics), Center (what it says), perhaps blockquote (indent paragraph) and font sizing or colour, which you should be able to put in your word doc without problem.

Jessica
I don't just look it, I'm totally against using Word to generate HTML

Why, what is the problem?

The problem is that I don't want to reformat the whole story... I mean I don't use much fancy stuff... But I see what you mean. I went through the source code and it seemed to be much unneccesary stuff in there. I don't understand why that is a problem. I mean I don't need to code it and the result is quite ok.

Does that slow down the site, or why would that be a problem? Or does the word html use stuff that isn't on macs or linux-pcs?

The Word HTML stuff is shock

The Word HTML stuff is shock filled with stuff that nobody else gets any benefit from. You NEED to run that HTML through a cleaning program, like HTML Tidy (Which you should do with almost all automatically generated HTML anyway...) And... you won't get your formatting stuff preserved perfectly. Sure, on a Windows system with a user having the fonts and so installed, those details will be preserved. But it's awful at actually getting advanced formatting to work and be positioned where they should, like columns, margins, tables, images or other insertion elements.

Here is...

How I do it.

With Firefox...

Get the Write Line addon.

Then, from your Word doc with all the formatting, fonts, etc...
Select & copy the text you want to post.

Then, on BC, right click on the story text box and select "Edit in Write Line"

Select "Paste from Word"

Save

Input Format = "Filtered HTML w/o Line Breaks"

Post for the win!

-- Sleethr

I have never bothered using html formats when posting

for myself or others.

A plain .doc, or .rtf file, works just fine.

Then before submitting, go through and use the Bold, Italics, centered, etc buttons right above the submission/story window to put in the html requirements manually. That puts far less garbage ib the file compared to WORD.

The only other html coding I use is in setting up a prettier splash area for the title block and synopsis.
For that, I use a template I worked out with Sephrena's help a couple of years ago, and am willing to give to anyone who asks.

Unless you also want to add a picture, that's it.. If you want to add a picture, several people have posted different ways to do that. It used to be a topic in the Forum, but I do not see it any longer.

Holly

It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.

Holly

MS Word and HTML

Puddintane's picture

MS Word/Office tries to duplicate the look of the Word Document by adding CSS Styles to each and every paragraph. Styles are not ordinarily supported on Big Closet story entries, so this is the "garbage" that one finds in MS Word conversions.

The entry box for stories has a size limit, so an MS Word conversion may affect the story adversely by truncating the text, even though the document *looks* small when viewed in MS Word.

A generally safer conversion is to go from MS Word to RTF, and then convert from RTF to HTML using TextEdit or other RTF Editor, because most such editors don't fiddle as much with the HTML using Stylesheets.

Here's what the MS Word conversion looks like:

<p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN-US>The <i>quick</i></span><span lang=EN-US>
brown fox jumps over the <b>lazy</b></span><span lang=EN-US> dog.</span></p>

Here's what the TextEdit conversion looks like:

<p class="p1">The <i>quick</i> brown fox jumps over the <b>lazy</b> dog.</p>

Note: I've left out a lot of "header" information, because you'd have to do that anyway, or risk breaking the page.

Here's what the line looks like in "real life:"

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The MS Word conversion essentially doubles the size of the file.

Whether or not this bothers you, please consider that the BC server has to store the stuff, and serve it out to whomever reads the file, so you'll double the bandwidth and storage space used by every such story posted.

The other trick that works is to do a simple full-file screen copy and paste into the entry box. Be sure to add real double spaces between paragraphs. Word is usually set to display a space between paragraphs without actually producing it, which tends to look bad when copied.

Here's the link to my small collection of "tips:"

http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/20914/writing

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

A point here

I understand that when a file is uploaded a lot of the unwanted HTML gets junked anyway, since it won't be required for final display. At that point I'm sure it won't be stored in the BCTS servers. Of course, you'll still be uploading double-sized files...

My policy is: Write using whatever word processor, save as RTF. When complete, open RTF and save as HTML. Then use Notepad or similar (gedit :) to get rid of: entire header section, reduce all paragraph tags to <P> and </P>, clean out everything else except center, italic and bold indicators. Upload.

Penny

An easy way in WORD to double space paragraphs in 2 steps

It does require a document that has soft returns on all lines except the ends of paragraphs. But a file created in either WORD .RTF or .DOC is formatted like that in any case.

Using WORD's FIND & Replace:
1. Click on 'More', then Special.
2. Special creates a drop down. The first item is 'Paragraph Mark'. Click it,
do it again. The Find What is now '^p' Set Replace With to '^p^p' Click 'Replace All'.

That should do it. I've used this or another technique maybe 20 times here on BCTS when someone has posted a story with no blank lines between paragraphs.

*********************************

A similar technique can be used if you have a new file, or a file from FM, Storysite or elsewhere that uses a hard return at the end of every line AND a Double spaced line between paragraphs, making it difficult to read on a screen that has less spaces across than your computer or whatever. You can fix that using similar techniques.

Using WORD's FIND & Replace:
1. Click on 'More', then Special.
2. Special creates a drop down. The first item is 'Paragraph Mark'. Click it,
do it again. The Find What is now '^p^p' Set Replace With to '&&' Click 'Replace All'.
3. Edit the Find What ^p^p to just ^p. Edit Replace With to a single space. Click 'Replace All'.
4. Edit the Find What ^p to '&&'. Edit Replace With to ^p^p using the Special drop down box. Click 'Replace All'.

*******************************
Word Perfect can be used in a similar manner, but uses the Hrt code instead of WORDS ^p.

(Note that in Word Perfect to insert codes in the Replace field, you have to select Match, then Codes while the cursor is in the Find window even if you are going to select a code for the Replace window.

But you do only have to select MATCH CODES once.

Holly

It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.

Holly

double space

Patricia Marie Allen's picture

Composing in Word, I find it best to go to paragraph (at the bottom of the ribbon at the top) and set Spacing to 0 pt before and 0 pt after, then type as usual. This will force you to double space each paragraph to get the readability on your screen.

Hugs
Patricia

Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt

Copy and paste direct.

You don't need to bother saving as HTML. You can copy and paste the text directly into the story window as plain text. Yes you will lose some formatting if you are using bold and italics, but most stories don't use much, and it isn't hard to reformat. What I tend to do is embed the formatting codes directly into the text so that I don't forget them later. and for bold, and for emphasis/italics.

Don't bother trying to override the default font or text size on the site, it doesn't usually work very well.

What you will need to do is make sure that you have suitable paragraph breaks. The editor here will automatically see two line returns and make them into paragraphs. When writing you need to make sure your paragraphs have two line returns between them. Word sometimes allows you to have one return, and automatically adds a margin onto the bottom of the paragraph. If you paste text in from word like this, then you will end up with a solid block of text when you post.

The fix for this is to use Word's replace command. replace ^p with ^p^p. ^p is the code for a paragraph break.

When I first posted here, I went for the full html approach, but its a lot easier to paste as plain text and let the editor sort out the formatting for you. The only thing you may need to paste in as html, or format up yourself, is if you want a fancy heading. Personally I find it easier to code by hand, HTML isn't very complex.

Thank you very much... That

Thank you very much... That certainly solves most of my problems. I'll try the docx -> rtf -> html conversion too.

My main problem was that I didn't want to manually reformat every fucking break.

Thank you and everyone else for your suggestions.

Beyogi

MS Word

I hear people recommending using other than MS Word. Problem is, it is a good word processor, easy to use and comfortable. The last thing I need when writing is a learning curve for special programs. However, I have problems with it on other uses (very similar to this). The character set isn't as fixed as many people think, and it can be a real pain. People keep trying to get me to switch to Linux. It could happen when XP is no longer supported, but not until then.

My biggest headache is currently .docx . I don't use it, won't use it, and can't use it. Yet people keep sending me documents in that format. I have tried to help edit other peoples work, there are a lot of 3rd party programs. Their choice, use what you like, but it does make it difficult to share.

When it comes down to it use what you like, but be prepared to turn it into a text file if needed.

Since I use Word 97 I use copy/paste or save it as a .txt file, and learn the HTML tags as needed.

No, not really

MS Word is fine if all you're doing is writing the occasional letter or just dumping down a load of text for an assignment. Try to do anything remotely interesting - read 'not what the writers of MS Word think you want to do' - and it very quickly becomes EXTREMELY BLOODY ANNOYING.

MS Word is the single computer program that can double my blood pressure with use. Problems with that and with the other MS Office programs are some of the factors which made me move away from Microsoft to Linux.

Another factor is the cost: Linux costs me next to nothing and every distribution there is comes with all the software you should need, such as word processors, graphics programs, audio, video, internet, you name it. No paying Microsoft for each application, no paying them for installing them on each machine, either.

You're right about .docx, of course. Microsoft wants everybody to do things it's way, that means that everybody has to (buy and) use their programs to read and write their file formats. Just say no. Almost all word processing programs accept and write in Rich Text Format (.rtf). Try to get others to use this format instead. You'll probably find the files are much smaller, too.

PM me if you need further information or help.

Penny

MS Word Docx

You don't have to.

If they saved as word 97-2003 document, you'd be fine.

All you have to do is ask that they send you in that format. It's not difficult for them and makes things a hell of a lot easier for you.

Hope this helps

Nick

Jessica.jpg
I don't just look it, I'm totally a dab hand with Word

With XP

You could try Open Office. It reads almost all the file types, can save as a PDF, is based on the Open Document Format and there is an ePub addon that you can use to export your story as an ePub.

It's also free...

And..if you ever do get talked into Linux ( Ubuntu ) Open Office comes standard so you will always be able to open/edit your docs.

I only use Word because my office uses Word and my HTML Firefox addon ( Write Line ) works best with Word. :(

I actually use Google Docs for 90% of my writing. It's collaboration features and cloud based doc storage/access is very nice for letting my beta-readers/editors provide story feedback as I am writing.

-- Sleethr

Libre Office

Daniela Wolfe's picture

Better yet use Libre Office. It's a fork of OO.o and has already surpassed OpenOffice in functionality.

I do all my own coding so I wouldn't be of much help to you.


Have delightfully devious day,

I use word for writing my

I use word for writing my stories but once there finished and the editing has been done, I copy and paste the story into Adobe Dreamweaver, it has the option of seeing the document in design mode which is great for editing and when you have it the way you want it to look you just have to click the code button then copy the code. Once the code is copied you can pasted it on bigcloset. You will still need to do some minor editing but other then that its pretty straight forward.

Cain129