Story Digest?

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Because of present circumstances - partner in a hospital ward 60 miles away - I find that I don't really have the time to spend reading all the excellent stories I might wish to. This situation is only going to get worse when she comes home at the end of the week (I hope).

I can't afford the time to spend sitting at a computer several hours a day. I will however, have time in the evenings to read off-line, as it were. I know that Erin has provided a facility for stories to be downloaded as PDFs, which is good, but there are so many of them and one would have to try and keep one's own records of what one was following and which episode was which.

Would it be possible to produce a periodic digest of stories to be downloadable? Say on a weekly basis? That means that all stories would be available and one could choose when and where to read them. I guess there are others here who could benefit from such a service, particularly those who might commute, or are travelling, or who are off in a clinic somewhere waiting for things to happen.

Any chance something like this could be considered? Or am I up there with the flying pigs?

Penny

Huh?

erin's picture

Maybe it's just too early in the day but I'm not sure of what you're asking for that does not already exist. :) The stories don't go away, so they are always there to download. The last seven days feature provides a listing for seven days of stories. What else is needed?

I do hope your partner and you make it through this intense period with love and caring for each other.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Clarity. I remember clarity

It seems like only... I forget now. Where was I?

I think what I was looking for was a single file containing all the stories for the week, or some other period if that would be too big. That way I could just do one download and grab everything instead of having to remember which stories I was following and which was the last episode I downloaded of each.

If I download individual files, I could end up spending some hours (and concentration) downloading them all, and I then have to find them again in my download folder. After which, I then have to do a little post-processing before loading onto my eBook (an ancient Palm m505. Hey, it works).

One file a week - or a file every few days - is about as much as I can handle at the moment. It would also get round the problem of the "moving window" (if I chose the "last seven days" option) with the possibility of missing a story posting if I didn't grab the listing at exactly the same time each week. At the moment, "regular" isn't a word I can make much use of, unfortunately.

As I said, such a format could be quite useful if one were travelling, to Thailand, say. It would be easier to pick up a week's stories as a single file if one had to use a hotel link or an internet cafe.

Penny

I don't have a way to do that

erin's picture

There's a module called eMagazine, which would do something like this, unfortunately, it's incompatible with several other modules and causes crashes when I try to install it. And it would not quite do what you want, no one single file for a week. A week's stories is almost 100, btw, the length of 3 or 4 good novels. I can't see making such a file available because many people would be unable to download it. :)

I don't think anyone reads everything posted in a week, during that week. There's just too many stories! And whatever your likes or dislikes, it's probably that the stuff you really want to read is something less than half of what comes out in a week, so a file with everything in it would mostly be waste.

No, sorry, I just can't think of how to make that work.

Hmm. What if you could mark certain authors and/or categories to have those stories emailed to you on a weekly basis? There's a module called organic groups that allows you to set something like that up. It may not work exactly like that but it's something similar.

That might serve a large part of your need; though, I think every group in organic groups needs one or more moderators to do the scut work. I'll look into it.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.