I acknowledge that using the PDF format proves troublesome for some of the readers. Unfortunately I barely find the time to write and even less time to learn to use this particular program. Early on Drea was kind enough to assist with some of my shorter tales. However, as my tales grew in length, and involved more graphics and therefore more formatting, the program wouldn't even accept the input ('Pet'). That is when I fumbled upon the PDF format.
Finding that I needed an inordinate amount of time to simply fill out the 'lead' portion of information 'sheet' to post, using the PDF format proved to be a time and frustration saver. I apologize to those who found this to be an inconvenience for nobody comes to this site to work. I will try using the regular format for my next tale...whenever that might be.
May You All Have Peace on This Day...
Kelly
Comments
PDF?
No apologies necessary.
Corel developed WordPerfect, the initial PDF (portable document format) and several other very (should be capital letters) formats.
The first tried and true POWERFUL word processing format was WordPerfect (sorry - not Word). Word came along about the same point in time and the only reason it is so popular is because Microsoft pushes it with their operating systems (for which they lost several lawsuits - it's called bundling but they are still doing it - go figure).
Anyway, back to my point, I use WordPerfect (extensively) as it is both a legal and a part of a powerful engineering program system. WordPerfect (a product of Corel) transfers readily into pdf (also Corel). Both are VERY user oriented programs which retain image and text formatting during translation. Kindle press uses (or used - I haven't posted there in a couple of years) pdf as one of the major input formats for their conversion to the format they use for the Kindle.
The only way I have been able to post on this site has been to cut and paste and that's a s.. of .. a b.. when images are involved (especially if they need to be in particular places in the text).
So, I have no problem with pdf file and found your use of same to be refreshing.
I have a number of completed stories which will not see the light of day here, unfortunately, since I simply do not feel up to 'running the gauntlet' to post them. Presently there are four stories being written (since I re-retired a few weeks ago) which are not TG but are fantasy similar to "The Last of the Fey" and "Aliens are Us" (yes, I wrote that one but it was posted by Renae).
Red MacDonald and I are working (mostly he is) on a quintet of stories which are fantasy and which will likely wind up on Kindle. My first inclination was to pop them into pdf format.
Back to your use of same... pdf is a tried and true (as I mentioned before) format which keeps the formatting of a story very much in alignment start to finish. It has the added benefit of being "lockable" which prevents the easy excerpt of portions (or of the whole story) for use for someone else's benefit.
By the way, thanks for a good story.
A.
Corel bought WordPerfect.
BTW, felt the need to mention, Corel did not CREATE WordPerfect. They are just the current owners. It was previously owned by Novel and was originally created in 1979 by a Graduate Student and Professor I think at Brigham Young University.
-Piper
P.S. I have never bought a copy of Windows that came with Word or any other part of the MS Office line unless you include MS Outlook Express. I have however bought PC's and Laptops where the OEM chose to push MS Office and even tho I first learned WP for Dos and later WP for Windows in school, I prefer MS's Office line.
There's no need for
There's no need for apologizing when PDF is the only format that does what you need. It was originally developed as a cross platform document format - that's it. "Portable Document Format". Adobe has abused it beyond belief. (Embedded videos, really?)
My only objection to PDF is when every company and their dog, with full access to their original document (rather than scanned), insist on making all their support files PDF, rather than just low-bandwidth, low resource, searchable HTML. Even the old Microsoft Frontpage could create usable HTML that was better than the vast majority of "Let's make all our crap PDF" support, sales, and marketing documents.
PDF has its place - just not as 'everything'.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
yes, very true - thank you for mentioning that
pdf is a resource "hog". I had forgotten.
My problem with most sites is, I cannot code in HTML and have not found a wordprocessor which does so cleanly (not even WordPerfect or Word). Additionally, I am VERY particular in where I want my images to be placed and HTML cannot (or will not) do what I want. Ergo, pdf.
But yes, you are right pdf is a great format but it does love to take up space on a hard drive.
God Bless,
A.
PDF is fine for paper
PDF is fine for paper, that is what it was developed for.
Unfortunately, it is less than optimal for online use. It makes an number of assumptions about the size and shape of the display surface, and the available fonts, almost none of which are true on any online system.
I wrote a piece about this problem in response to another member's question here: Uploading Chapters. That explains why formats like PDF are unsuitable for a medium where every reader is likely to have a different display shape, size and resolution.
Actually, HTML is almost absurdly easy to use, if you just want to push text. As with any system there are bells and whistles but one can publish a story here with minimal effort. The system I use - explained above - takes almost no effort on my part and I even cut'n'paste headings to save rewriting the awkward bits.
Oh, and the reason pdf files are big is because the word processor you use takes things to extremes. The pdf format by itself is no more of a resource hog than any other file format.
Penny
HTML will let you
HTML will let you specifically place images. It's just that there are at least three different ways of specifying where to put an image (at least) and that's without style sheets. So, if you KNOW HTML, it's easy. If you don't, it seems insurmountable.
For basic HTML editing - I just use SeaMonkey. It still has the basic WYSIWYG editor that Mozilla started with, inherited from Netscape.
And PDF is a hog, no matter what your original source is. I download a 20K PDF file, wait for it to load, and every time I change pages, I have to wait while it rasterizes the bugger, maxing out a CPU while doing it. (I have yet to find a PDF viewer that will load the entire document into memory so I can read the blasted thing) The same document, as a 'document' file (HTML, .doc, txt, whatever), comes up instantly.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Don't Apologize Please
I spent my time reading the story and curiously found myself right on the verge of weeping, longing, howling need the whole way through. I wonder how many of us wish this had happened to us? So many never have a lustful, driving sexual need but respond with total abandon to someone able to touch us and to value us. Is it a psychological disorder or is it simply our different state of being?
Here I have been living as a woman now for 11 years when perhaps all I was is simply a gay intersex person? The way things worked out in the story, it was all perfectly "heterosexual" to those who needed to see that. It looks like to Jackie's mother, the happiness of her child was most important, and as far as the father, he was absent and detached.
Very nice story.
Gwen
another option
is Apache openoffice, it does have a learning curve for some, but it is compatible with most formats, opening AND saving them. just an idea for those having issues?
has anyone tried using it for here, or otherwise?
Teresa L.
Open Office
the GPL version of Sun Microsystems Star Office that is still free and available because Oracle couldn't pull the plug on the completely open source version when they bought Sun Microsystems and killed Star Office ( along with Solaris )
It is just as much a resource hog as MS Office with it's requirement for Java, but it's the only office suite that runs on all operating systems.
I only use it, since the other options will not run on my operating systems natively.
The learning curve is greater than it used to be, because OO did not switch to the "ribbon" interface MS did.
open winzip/winrar and pick an OO file for it to open, you get the xml stylesheet, css, and xml markup of the content for the file. All of which can be opened in a basic tool such as notepad. That gives you the secret to use html, the xml layout and css are what controls the placement of content like images and work perfectly with xhtml and html5. But exporting saving as html will give you a bad looking page, since software conversion from one format to another always fails in some fashion.
To work with html for uploading, just use a basic text editor for the story, and use a high quality html tool like Coffee Cup HTML Editor that you copy and paste the content into, placing images where you want them. Just remember, absolute positioning will break with different screen / window sizes, relative position will shift, and will not keep the "perfect" placement. Using images in such a way that they need to fir with a specific block of text will always be extremely difficult with html, that then leaves the ereader formats and PDF as the only options. kindle only works for kindle readers, epub for mobi readers, PDF for everyone. ( my ereader software doesn't play with kindle at all so that format is unusable for me )
Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.
.mobi works on most kindle
.mobi works on most kindle readers, as kindle's azw format is based on MobiPocket. ePub is an open-format sponsored greatly by adobe and others that Amazon chose to ignore. And not EVERYone supports PDF. Just most. Just like most non-kindle modern ereaders support ePub but not all.
-Piper
Support for PDF
I use a Kobo when I'm not reading on-line and, though it supports PDF format, it is at a fixed resolution. The page is zoomable and in order to read anything at all the page has to be zoomed. This means that I have to scroll left, right, up and down to read the whole of each page. This is tiresome in the extreme, and using e-ink it is extremely slow.
Most PDFs I have received I have run through extractors to get out the text and reformatted them as epubs, even though it is not a straightforward task. Much better to spend the time doing that than spend my life scrolling around a page.
On the other hand, the Kobo accepts epubs natively, even the ones I generate myself.
Penny
It came up instantly for me.
I had absolutely no problem with it once I found the link. I came back to it several times to look at the wonderful illustrations and read the delightful ending.
Portia