They come dancing 'round the window, like they're peeking through the glass...

[rolanni]

...They hover for a moment, then they fall on past.*

We got up early-ish in anticipation of the snow. Steve made a wonderful potato-and-sausage breakfast, put the towels in to wash, fed the birds, and started baking bread. My contribution to domestic productivity being the appreciative consumption of breakfast, folding the towels when they were dry, and alphabetizing the hundreds of tracking slips associated with the Great Eidolon Mailing. Those chores done, Hexapuma and I retired to the living room, I to read Fledgling, he to produce Sleep Rays.

Mozart is on the bed, also engaged in Sleep Ray production, while Scrabble is in Steve's office, chaperoning Win Ton and Theo.

It is, as I type, 2 degrees above zero(F) and snowing. We're told to expect on the order of 18 inches of snow -- a number that has remained disturbingly steady for the last 24 hours. On the one hand, I sure could use a snow-day tomorrow. On the other hand, I really would like it if the lights stayed on.

I did go back and plant that hook in Fledgling which added a handful of words -- nothing to signify.

As I'm going through the manuscript, I find that, not only is the spacing is Utterly Borked throughout, but the fonts skip from one to another, random as lambs in the springtime. Not best pleased with Open Office 3.0, me. I suppose, in some ways, my typewriter consciousness has finally caught up with me. On a typewriter -- here's a picture of a machine remarkably like the one I learned to type on for those of you too young to recall "typewriters."

With a typewriter, I say, one sets the line spacing by means of a ratchet. You may vary the line spacing within the document by manipulating the ratchet, but once the spacing is set for, say, double-space, it stays that way until you change it. None of this single, double, space-and-a-half at whim nonsense. I have always treated a word processor like an absurdly complex typewriter. I set my parameters -- in the case of this particular manuscript, double spaced, inch-round margins, Arial font (I know, I know, but it's easy for me to read) -- and I expect them to stay that way. I am not at all pleased to find that Evil Gremlins get into the file while it's closed and play skittles with the product.

I don't want to have to set paragraph styles every dern time I go to a new paragraph. I. Just. Want. To. Type. And to have what I type remain as I typed it, until I decide to change or delete it. This seems so simple and basic that it's Even More Infuriating when it doesn't work.

Ah, well... Today's task is the fast-read. After I pull the Brilliant Resolutions to those two plot-points out of my hat, then's the time to spell-check, fix the fracking formatting and put the book on a bus to our editor.

Where I hope it will arrive in readable condition.

---------
*Rachel's Song, James McMurtry

Comments

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

One of the many reasons I prefer WordPerfect to Word is that it doesn't faff around with that formatting-by-paragraph nonsense if you don't want it to. (You can do Paragraph Styles if you want to, but it's not obligatory . . . and no matter how many times I hear people tell me that Styles are the neatest thing since sliced bread, the explanations fail to convince.)

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it would work to Select All and then set the spacing. No idea, but it might work.

WordStar, anyone?

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I'm the last dinosaur using WordStar (the DOS version, not WSW!). The problems Rolanni is having don't always go away when WS format is translated into MS Word (haven't tried Open Office), but I've generally had good luck. There is also an add-in command set for Word (up to 2000, maybe later) that duplicates the WS command set almost perfectly, including some, but not all of, the formatting commands.

Jack Barnes

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

I love-love-love-love your writing. I hate-hate-hate-hate-HATE Arial. If I could it would not exist on any computer I use... (My vision is astigmatic, and sans serif fonts, particularly loathsome-abomination-from-hell-Arial, are bad news for me.)