Re: New poll for buffyloveswillow

[Tater <tater@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 03:52 AM 7/26/01 -0000, you wrote:
> I rise in support of attachments.For one thing, my e-mail program will not
allow me to use italics orbold face unless I use HTML.That's why I learned
it. If we go allplain-text, I'll have to emphasize by going all dorky with
theALLCAPS, and dream sequences and the like would have to go into
those<<double carets>>, which after a bit, you forget are there, whereasif
you stay in italics people can easily see that you're in italics.Second,
plain-text is Ugly, as in UGLY! Not only do we have to putup with dingy
green on black background if the posts come in oure-mail, but in my posts
and others, like Cilia's most recent, theformatting always gets screwed up.
You get one line that goes allthe way across the page, and one line that
barely starts, and oneline that goes all the way across,etc., etc.I'll give
an illustration but the formatting will probably screw thisup, too. And I'm
composing this in the "reply" section ofthe board,not my e-mail.Here's how
the plain-text
looks:aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbccccccccccccccccc
cccccccccccccccccccccccccccdddddddddeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeIt's like trying to read a &^&*%&%^! comb!HTML solves this. HTML is
best. HTML is extra work for me to writein, but I do it because I want my
stuff to look better than thatplain-text drek. It's wrong to say that HTML
stuff should go straight to the archive.I have an ego, I write (at least
partly) for an audience, as othersdoubtless do, and I'm sure that stuffing
us in the archive would cutour audience by aconservative
90%.Attachments,please!DanLate Edit: After typing this post (and remember
this is in theboard's own reply box; it has nothing to do with my e-mail),
I wentto preview it. Wanting to fine-tune it, I hit edit, and
discoveredthat all my paragraph breaks, line spaces, space at the start
ofsentences and, in many cases, space between ordinary words, had
beendeleted, and I was faced with an indecipherable block of text (I'veleft
the original message in this mess to show you). If this
>


But part of the audience you are writing for never sees the italics or bold
face. If you're using bold face to emphasise words, or italics to show
dream sequences, I have no idea. It just blends right in with the rest of
the text when I get it, and the effect is completely lost. Also, I get to
see all the HTML tags that only the computer is supposed to see. A lot of
posts have so much HTML coding in them that I'm seeing a bunch of
meaningless characters, with a word in between them, followed by a bunch
more meaningless characters, then another word. It can make a single
sentence unreadable, far more so an entire fic. I look at the block of text
above, with the spacing removed, that you find so offensive, and marvel at
how much easier it is to read than the latest chapter of your fic that I
tried to read.

There are writers I don't read because the formatting they use comes out so
garbled in my email, that it's not worth the trouble, no matter how good
their work is. I just can't read it through all the gunk. You happen to be
one of those writers. When your stories end up on a website somewhere, and
I can actually pick out the words, then I will read them.

I apologize if this seems in any way to be a personal attack. It's not
intended to be. I have nothing against you, and it's not really you that
has annoyed me so much. It's just your computer program's incompatability
with mine that is causing me a great deal of frustration, and I'm venting.
I hate getting fic that I can't read because I *want* to read it.


tater (Vegetables of the world unite!)