Okay, I decided to take a break from the writing to do a bit more work
on this little thing. For those of you weren't around a few months
back, or who just plain can't remember, 3FT (Fan Fiction Formatting
Tool) is a little command-line utility which will convert any text file
to a format suitable for posting to the FFML, RAAC, or any other
mailing list you happen to post stuff to.
After extensive research (thanks John! ;) I've added a few more
features to it. This is what it basically does (see readme.txt for
a full list):
* Wrap lines and insert newline characters where appropriate.
* Convert tabs to spaces, formatting to columns.
* Strip all invisible control characters.
* Replace non 7-bit ASCII characters with alternatives.
It copes very well with prose and well enough with scripts if you give
it the same setting as your WP, but if anyone finds a problem, let me
know.
There are two main formatting problems on this and other mailing lists
and NGs (there are others, a lot more info is available in the
readme.txt):
* Lines being too long - just because it looks okay in your WP
doesn't mean it looks okay in a text viewer. You need to insert
newlines after each visible line. Tedious. ;) 3FT will do this
for you.
* 'Smartquotes' and the like not converted correctly, resulting in
control characters all over - this is caused by people directly
copying a block of text from a sophisticated WP to a new email,
which you should NEVER do. If you use 3FT to process your file
beforehand this shouldn't happen.
Interested? Find it at:
http://www.gameart.com/4ca/3ft.zip
...and the documentation is at:
http://www.gameart.com/4ca/3ft-readme.txt
Please give me some feedback on this. To forestall a lot of mail
similar to that which I received the last time I will just state that I
know there are a few WPs out there that will do this already, but 3FT
has one major advantage - it's free, and is therefore of interest to
those of us who soldier on with Wordpad and no money. And I can
particularly do without messages along the lines of (direct quote)
"what the **** use is this?!". From other mails I got it is indeed of
use to many people, so I think that answers that.
Do feel free to forward this post to any other fanfic-related list, NG
or site. There's a lot out there and I'd never find them all. ;)
Also, if anyone could compile Unix, Linux and/or Mac version for me,
give me a mail and I'll send you the source code. Someone did
volunteer, but I've lost their address.
And I trust everyone has spotted the Dirty Pair reference? ;)
Cheers,
- Subi
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|__|| / | subi@gameart.com == 501596
||___|__/| http://www.gameart.com/4ca
BTW: Anyone know what happened to www.fanfiction.net?