* Is It Just Me - Importing Text Headaches -AM I Going MAD?

Freeway
1

I was looking for an answer to this problem, thinking there MUST be a way to import the text with out getting double paragraph returns. I see there isn’t. So, since NOBODY types like that and I get text from all over the place, which means I’m not going to be able to GET anybody to type like that, for every piece of text I enter into a website, I must first do a global search and replace of two paragraph returns to one paragraph returns. That might be okay for websites that don’t get changed that often, but when I do updated text every week on several sites, getting text from multiple persons, it is a lot of extra work. Seems like there should be an option in Freeway that allows us to paste plain text as is, and not force us to reformat the text before we can copy and paste it in.

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2

On 2 May. 2008, 9:21 pm, Robin Stark wrote:

I was looking for an answer to this problem, thinking there MUST be a way to import the text with out getting double paragraph returns. I see there isn’t. So, since NOBODY types like that and I get text from all over the place, which means I’m not going to be able to GET anybody to type like that, for every piece of text I enter into a website, I must first do a global search and replace of two paragraph returns to one paragraph returns. That might be okay for websites that don’t get changed that often, but when I do updated text every week on several sites, getting text from multiple persons, it is a lot of extra work. Seems like there should be an option in Freeway that allows us to paste plain text as is, and not force us to reformat the text before we can copy and paste it in.

Robin, although this doesn’t take care of other third party documents, take a look at this action that strips out the extra fluff from Word docs. http://www.freewayactions.com/product.php?id=029

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3

I had this very same issue when I first started using Freeway. I seem to
recall being told that it would not conform to “proper” text formatting
to do it any other way. I decided to give up the fight.

Anna Masiak (is she still with SoftPress?) suggested this:

In creating a style for your text, add a Paragraph specification of
“Space before: 0 px” and another of “Space after: 0 px.”

While it wasn’t exactly what I had been asking for, the end result does
essentially solve the problem: it looks the way I want it to.

Matt

on 05/02/08 5:21 PM Robin Stark said:

I was looking for an answer to this problem, thinking there MUST be a way to import the text with out getting double paragraph returns. I see there isn’t. So, since NOBODY types like that and I get text from all over the place, which means I’m not going to be able to GET anybody to type like that, for every piece of text I enter into a website, I must first do a global search and replace of two paragraph returns to one paragraph returns. That might be okay for websites that don’t get changed that often, but when I do updated text every week on several sites, getting text from multiple persons, it is a lot of extra work. Seems like there should be an option in Freeway that allows us to paste plain text as is, and not force us to reformat the text before we can copy and paste it in.

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4

It’s more that anyone who gives you text with double-returns has made
a mistake at the outset. And if those people giving you text could be
bothered to set the space-after in their word-processing software,
then they wouldn’t be tempted to perpetuate this problem.

There’s a whole book about this, called “The Mac Is Not A
Typewriter”, by Robin Williams (not the actor, but the nice lady who
teaches graphic artists and Web designers). It is recommended, nay,
required reading for everyone who uses a computer to make text for
print. She goes through everything – don’t use multiple spaces where
a tab would do. Don’t use two returns after a paragraph, just as you
don’t need to use two spaces after a full stop.

All those bad habits came about because typewriters were annoyingly
unable to do anything better, what with their rigid mechanical
nature. These “hacks” were meant to make things more readable, when
all they did was introduce characters into the text stream that had
nothing at all to do with the content.

Walter

On May 2, 2008, at 7:09 PM, Matt Wills wrote:

I had this very same issue when I first started using Freeway. I
seem to
recall being told that it would not conform to “proper” text
formatting
to do it any other way. I decided to give up the fight.

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5

On 05/03/08 Walter Lee Davis wrote:

Don’t use two returns after a paragraph, just as you don’t need to
use two spaces after a full stop.

It’s not two returns after a paragraph.

I start with a list of single-spaced items:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G

Fine as “typed” (entered, whatever) in TextWrangler, Thunderbird,
anything else I have available.

Copying and pasting it into Freeway (and, for that matter, Thunderbird),
it comes out as

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

Which, in Freeway, necessitates adding the previously described Space
Before/After spec to the style, because a single return is interpreted
as a paragraph, not as a single space return.

It was a single spaced list to start (one return at the end of each
line), but copying it and pasting it resulted in an additional empty
line being inserted. This doesn’t happen in any app I have been able to
test in Winduhs (Thunderbird, StarOffice and SuperEdi). To me, this is a
Mac fault (though not in all apps): it should paste what I copied, not
what someone else has decided is correct. (I should point out that, if I
create the list using Shift-Return at the end of the line, copying and
pasting does result in a single-spaced list. I maintain that it should
not be necessary to do that.)

On the other hand, two returns are necessary after a paragraph.
Otherwise, all of these paragraphs would not be visually separated. Fine
if you’re using indented paragraphs (hardly ever seen any more), but it
would be rather confusing in block form. Yes, word processor wrapping
makes it unnecessary to put a return at the end of each line, but you
still have to do it (TWICE) between block paragraphs.

As for two spaces after a full stop (period), that has absolutely
nothing to do with the mechanical limitation of typewriters: it’s just
good form (separating sentences visually), and you either do it or you
don’t. I have slipped away from it of late because HTML doesn’t display
two spaces unless you add non-breaking, and I tire of having to remember
different rules for different apps.

Matt

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6

There is no such thing in type (especially HTML type) as a single-
spaced list as you describe. There is a list made by using forced
line breaks, which are NOT returns, made by entering option-return.
In HTML, this translates into a <br /> tag, which means exactly
what it does in typography.

And if you really want to make a /list/, then select your row of what
appear to be double-spaced letters, and make them into a (non-
indented) list using the Inspector. That has two benefits: it makes
the text look the way you want it to, and it makes the letters into
a /semantic/ list, which means that since you meant this collection
of letters stacked above one another to be a unit – a list – rather
than a disjointed collection of individual paragraphs of one letter
each, then the list is treated as a separate unit all by itself; as a
container of related elements.

Otherwise, use a paragraph with forced line-breaks.

Walter

On May 3, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Matt Wills wrote:

Which, in Freeway, necessitates adding the previously described Space
Before/After spec to the style, because a single return is interpreted
as a paragraph, not as a single space return.

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7

The bottom line, then, is that HTML doesn’t play nice with word
processing. What you do to achieve layout in WP doesn’t work in the
WYSIWYG Freeway uses to generate HTML.

Robin Stark (the OP) had an issue with what Freeway did with text from
contributors, which has to be manipulated for it to come out looking
reasonably the same in HTML. It certainly isn’t the fault of the
contributor.

It remains, in my opinion, just plain wrong and a royal PITA. This can
be argued ad nauseum, but since neither of us is going to convince the
other, I suggest we just agree to disagree.

Matt

on 05/03/08 11:39 AM Walter Lee Davis said:

There is no such thing in type (especially HTML type) as a single-
spaced list as you describe. There is a list made by using forced
line breaks, which are NOT returns, made by entering option-return.
In HTML, this translates into a <br /> tag, which means exactly
what it does in typography.

And if you really want to make a /list/, then select your row of what
appear to be double-spaced letters, and make them into a (non-
indented) list using the Inspector. That has two benefits: it makes
the text look the way you want it to, and it makes the letters into
a /semantic/ list, which means that since you meant this collection
of letters stacked above one another to be a unit – a list – rather
than a disjointed collection of individual paragraphs of one letter
each, then the list is treated as a separate unit all by itself; as a
container of related elements.

Otherwise, use a paragraph with forced line-breaks.

Walter

On May 3, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Matt Wills wrote:

Which, in Freeway, necessitates adding the previously described Space
Before/After spec to the style, because a single return is interpreted
as a paragraph, not as a single space return.

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8

Sometime around 3/5/08 (at 11:23 -0400) Matt Wills said:

It was a single spaced list to start (one return at the end of each
line), but copying it and pasting it resulted in an additional empty
line being inserted. This doesn’t happen in any app I have been able to
test in Winduhs (Thunderbird, StarOffice and SuperEdi). To me, this is a
Mac fault (though not in all apps): it should paste what I copied, not
what someone else has decided is correct.

When you paste text that contains a hard return, that’s what you get.
A hard return is a paragraph break - there just aren’t two ways about
it.

The HTML specifications have always held that paragraphs should be
separated by a visual space. It isn’t a design-thinking thing or a
Mac thing, it was crafted and established by the academics that came
up with this HTML malarkey in the first place. It is part of the core
standard behaviour of HTML text rendering, so we just have to work
with it.

It is possible to override this visual spacing behaviour in CSS if
you like. But Freeway shows you ‘What Browsers Will Do’ with
paragraphs; it is just doing what it should. This isn’t Freeway
forcing its own world view on you, and it isn’t a Mac thing, this is
Freeway showing you what your paragraphs of text will do in HTML. Any
further control is up to you!

As for two spaces after a full stop (period), that has absolutely
nothing to do with the mechanical limitation of typewriters: it’s just
good form (separating sentences visually), and you either do it or you
don’t.

Well, I can’t argue with the factual statement that you either do it
or you don’t…

BUT it absolutely IS a convention that came about from the
limitations of fixed-width mechanical typewriter ‘setting’. It was
never done from Gutenburg onward until typewriters were invented, and
it was never done anywhere but in monospaced type environments. It is
specifically to aid reading where a period/full-stop would otherwise
be placed optically too near the following stentence and slow down
reading.

This is still taught in many typing courses, even though they’re
using word processors and variable-spaced type. But that doesn’t make
it right. In no way is double-spacing between sentences acceptable in
any other form of type setting; it is explicitly typographically
wrong, and will always, when handled by people or software that knows
what to do, be condensed down to a single space after
periods/full-stops.

Every book and magazine editor will watch for and strip out double
spaces in content submitted by writers, and if it keeps coming in
like that they’re likely to request that the writer stops doing it -
or just stop commissioning them.

Trust me, I’m a type-obsessed, design-trained, senior lecturer in
publishing at the London College of Communication, co-author of The
Digital Designer’s Bible (among others), and MacUser magazine’s
Technical Editor! :slight_smile:

k

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9

I’d like to add that it isn’t just Freeway users that have to alter
text this way but users of the majority (maybe even all?) web and
graphic design applications. This, by no means, justifies the
irritation but highlights the difference between design applications
and text editors/word processors.

I’ll log a suggestion back in the office on Tuesday (Monday is a
holiday in the UK) for having something like a paste from word
processor option that changes one paragraph break into a soft break
and a double paragraph into a single paragraph.

Joe

On 3 May 2008, at 17:09, Matt Wills wrote:

The bottom line, then, is that HTML doesn’t play nice with word
processing. What you do to achieve layout in WP doesn’t work in the
WYSIWYG Freeway uses to generate HTML.

Robin Stark (the OP) had an issue with what Freeway did with text from
contributors, which has to be manipulated for it to come out looking
reasonably the same in HTML. It certainly isn’t the fault of the
contributor.

It remains, in my opinion, just plain wrong and a royal PITA. This can
be argued ad nauseum, but since neither of us is going to convince the
other, I suggest we just agree to disagree.

Matt

on 05/03/08 11:39 AM Walter Lee Davis said:

There is no such thing in type (especially HTML type) as a single-
spaced list as you describe. There is a list made by using forced
line breaks, which are NOT returns, made by entering option-return.
In HTML, this translates into a <br /> tag, which means exactly
what it does in typography.

And if you really want to make a /list/, then select your row of what
appear to be double-spaced letters, and make them into a (non-
indented) list using the Inspector. That has two benefits: it makes
the text look the way you want it to, and it makes the letters into
a /semantic/ list, which means that since you meant this collection
of letters stacked above one another to be a unit – a list – rather
than a disjointed collection of individual paragraphs of one letter
each, then the list is treated as a separate unit all by itself; as a
container of related elements.

Otherwise, use a paragraph with forced line-breaks.

Walter

On May 3, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Matt Wills wrote:

Which, in Freeway, necessitates adding the previously described
Space
Before/After spec to the style, because a single return is
interpreted
as a paragraph, not as a single space return.

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10

Isn’t it just that - unless you specify otherwise by creating a paragraph
style with custom values - HTML defaults to give the space apart values that
you are finding too wide.

I’m sure that there are many text apps to do this but I use Tex-Edit Plus
with a cleanup document command that in a click can remove all double paras
and leading and trailing spaces - and convert multiple spaces to a single
space.

But it isn’t Freeway’s fault - in my humble opinion.
hope this helps

regards
Brian

Matt Wills said recently:

The bottom line, then, is that HTML doesn’t play nice with word
processing. What you do to achieve layout in WP doesn’t work in the
WYSIWYG Freeway uses to generate HTML.

Robin Stark (the OP) had an issue with what Freeway did with text from
contributors, which has to be manipulated for it to come out looking
reasonably the same in HTML. It certainly isn’t the fault of the
contributor.

It remains, in my opinion, just plain wrong and a royal PITA. This can
be argued ad nauseum, but since neither of us is going to convince the
other, I suggest we just agree to disagree.

Matt

on 05/03/08 11:39 AM Walter Lee Davis said:

There is no such thing in type (especially HTML type) as a single-
spaced list as you describe. There is a list made by using forced
line breaks, which are NOT returns, made by entering option-return.
In HTML, this translates into a <br /> tag, which means exactly
what it does in typography.

And if you really want to make a /list/, then select your row of what
appear to be double-spaced letters, and make them into a (non-
indented) list using the Inspector. That has two benefits: it makes
the text look the way you want it to, and it makes the letters into
a /semantic/ list, which means that since you meant this collection
of letters stacked above one another to be a unit – a list – rather
than a disjointed collection of individual paragraphs of one letter
each, then the list is treated as a separate unit all by itself; as a
container of related elements.

Otherwise, use a paragraph with forced line-breaks.

Walter

On May 3, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Matt Wills wrote:

Which, in Freeway, necessitates adding the previously described Space
Before/After spec to the style, because a single return is interpreted
as a paragraph, not as a single space return.

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11

At 10:30 -0400 3/5/08, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

All those bad habits came about because typewriters were annoyingly
unable to do anything better, what with their rigid mechanical
nature. These “hacks” were meant to make things more readable, when
all they did was introduce characters into the text stream that had
nothing at all to do with the content.

Not that there was any concept of a ‘text stream’ in the days of
typewriters before typesetters - just of the final visual effect.
Early punched card based computers were not used in a stream context
(I was an assembler programmer on such a machine for two years). The
earliest stream context I’m aware of is in the hot metal typesetter
taking data from a 15 column punched tape (I was also a programmer at
Linotype, working on computer based typesetters when we were still
trying to make them work like their hot metal predecessors). They
used a ‘Quad’ code (carriage return-like code) on the tape at the end
of each physical line that triggered the casting of the line. When
entering text from the keyboard I understand the operator decided on
the line ends with a ‘Quad’ key. Adding the paragraph leading was a
separate command, at least on the computer typesetters, just like a
double return. It was just a different code rather than two of the
same.

If you create a few, single return separated paragraphs in a table
cell (maybe otherwise as well, but this is a regular task for me);
publish and upload; then copy and paste those paragraphs from the
browser window into another Freeway table cell (again, maybe
otherwise too), you get double spaced paragraphs. This certainly
happens in 3.5.x and I’m fairly sure it also happens in 4, havn’t
tried in 5. My text-in-table-cells site is going to Joomla for CMS
reasons, so it’s still at 3.5.15.

David

–
David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
email@hidden
www.ivdcs.co.uk

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