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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: The Legacy of Korra
Topic ID: 73
#0, A Successful Test
Posted by Gryphon on Aug-03-14 at 03:34 PM
LAST EDITED ON Aug-04-14 AT 00:32 AM (EDT)
 
While I was futzing around with files in the course of building the Goodbye and Hello "Director's Cut" I mentioned over on the Symphony board, it occurred to me that Three Views of Dìqiú, which originally debuted as the "non-Forum bonus" on Mini-Story Omnibus 6, could stand to be broken out on its own - probably as part of The Legacy of Korra Book 6, since it deals with Korra and Corwin before he met Utena. So I started fooling around with that, and then I ran across some stuff that I was sent years ago and then, I'm not entirely sure why, never did much of anything with.

Back when Weapon of Choice came out, the old conversation about why I don't like to do whole stories in HTML (besides the fact that writing with inline markup is a bit of a faff) happened again, and the "well, just use CSS" thing came up again, only that time someone - Zack Weinberg, Forum user "zwol" - actually made me a "test sheet" to try and get the thing working. I remember looking at it and, as always when I tried to do anything with CSS, not comprehending what the heck was going on, and then I got distracted by other things (like, uh, having cancer) and never came back to it.

I experimented a little bit with CSS to make the Challenging the Cold Silence webpage work the wya I wanted it to, and in the process I dug out and referred to the test sheet Zack sent me. I got it working, but it was like cargo cult coding, I still didn't really get what it was doing.

Well, just now I looked at it again, and... well.

Look what I just got working.

Look what I just got working.

That was a small-scale test. I think my next attempt will be to restore the compiled version of A Fire to be Lighted to non-plaintext form, and in the process integrate A Bride Too Far into it as Part IV, since it's the real culmination of that entire storyline. That'll take longer, but should prove a more robust proficiency builder/test, since unlike Three Views, it isn't already in HTML; I'll have to pull it off the Forum and reconvert the code, like I do when I make Mini-Omnis. Bit of a faff, but I won't be able to argue with the result if it looks like the above. That's more or less what I've been wanting the web-based experiments to look like all along...

So thanks, Zack, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to doing anything with your contribution. Belatedly, it turns out to be exactly what I was looking for. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#1, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by Proginoskes on Aug-03-14 at 05:00 PM
In response to message #0
LAST EDITED ON Aug-03-14 AT 05:01 PM (EDT)
 
Lookin' good, Chief!

I'm reasonably sure you won't have this problem, but I want to warn you about it anyway: when I first got a handle on CSS, I temporarily lost all my sense of aesthetics. I turned everything into angry fruit salad, and I was not the first or last to do so.

((Edited to fix link markup.))


#2, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by zwol on Aug-03-14 at 05:48 PM
In response to message #0
Well, I'm glad it was helpful to you, even if it wound up being years later. :)

I'm generally happy to provide more help along those lines as/when necessary, or advice on how to do a specific thing, or explanation of why something does or does not work -- as I said way back when, this is what I do when I'm too tired to do anything else.


#3, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by JeanneHedge on Aug-03-14 at 07:11 PM
In response to message #0
Congratulations!

I've tried a few times to teach myself CSS through reverse engineering, but kept running up against the wall of not knowing where all the files being called were stowed at. It's a bit more complicated than basic HTML after all ^_^

But does this breakthrough mean that one of these years you'll do official ebook versions? (and I can stop making bootlegs for my Kindle)? ;)

Jeanne


Jeanne Hedge
http://www.jhedge.com
1st Courier of the Heavenly Prophets for Tianxia
"Never give up, never surrender!"



#4, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by Gryphon on Aug-03-14 at 07:20 PM
In response to message #3
LAST EDITED ON Aug-03-14 AT 07:20 PM (EDT)
 
>But does this breakthrough mean that one of these years you'll do
>official ebook versions? (and I can stop making bootlegs for my
>Kindle)? ;)

Of things that have already been published as very large plain text documents? Probably not. The overhead on the conversion would be pretty redonkulous. I've got better things to do with my life than sit wrapping <p> tags around every paragraph in the back catalog. Cattle have better things to do with their lives than that. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#5, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by BobSchroeck on Aug-04-14 at 10:57 AM
In response to message #0
>Look what I just got working.

And glorious it is, too.

Poking around after marvelling, though, I noticed something not directly relevant to the topic at hand, but... I see that Warriors of the Outer Rim is still listed under FI. Wasn't it supposed to become the central arc of a new "era" to be called The New Frontier? Has that plan been scrapped?

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.


#6, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by Gryphon on Aug-04-14 at 01:05 PM
In response to message #5
>Poking around after marvelling, though, I noticed something not
>directly relevant to the topic at hand, but... I see that Warriors
>of the Outer Rim
is still listed under FI. Wasn't it supposed to
>become the central arc of a new "era" to be called The New
>Frontier
? Has that plan been scrapped?

Dang, Bob, that's not even tangential, it's almost completely random. :)

Anyway, no, Warriors is not supposed to be the central arc of The New Frontier. It probably ought to be labeled as part of NF, since NF is loosely defined as "what happens after the Federation Civil War", but as that hasn't actually happened yet, on account of we were way too quick to assume that we'd mined out the 24-oughts, it's not as pressing a concern as it once might've seemed.

So no, not scrapped, but definitely not what you would call impending. I have ideas for major galactic events in the 2410s, but realistically, at this point, no idea when or if I'll get to them, because there's a lot happening before then that I still need to get through first, and my working pace is, I admit, not what it once was.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#7, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by BobSchroeck on Aug-04-14 at 04:40 PM
In response to message #6
>Anyway, no, Warriors is not supposed to be the central arc of
>The New Frontier. It probably ought to be labeled as
>part of NF, since NF is loosely defined as "what happens after
>the Federation Civil War", but as that hasn't actually happened yet,
>on account of we were way too quick to assume that we'd mined out the
>24-oughts, it's not as pressing a concern as it once might've seemed.

Ah. Okay, then, I must have misremembered something from way back when NF got announced.

>So no, not scrapped, but definitely not what you would call impending.
> I have ideas for major galactic events in the 2410s, but
>realistically, at this point, no idea when or if I'll get to them,
>because there's a lot happening before then that I still need to get
>through first, and my working pace is, I admit, not what it once was.

I dunno, your recent throughput seems to be close to that from the early 2000s. But hey, if anyone knows the frustration of not producing as fast as they want to, it's me, so I empathize completely.

Thanks for the answer.

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.


#8, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by Vorticity on Aug-04-14 at 06:07 PM
In response to message #7
> I dunno, your recent throughput seems to be close to that from the early 2000s.
> But hey, if anyone knows the frustration of not producing as fast as they want
> to, it's me, so I empathize completely.

I empathize with the frustration of you not producing fast enough too, Bob. <grin>

But things have been pretty good at EPU this summer. At first I was thinking, "Oh, not another Korra story; isn't Liza Shustal up to some privateering or something?" But then I found out that we were getting a story about a landing on the moon. And moon shots are pretty damn awesome, so I'm eagerly awaiting new parts of Challenging the Cold Silence.

It's stories like these that give me hope that humans will walk on the moon in my lifetime.


#9, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by Gryphon on Aug-04-14 at 06:15 PM
In response to message #8
>"Oh, not another Korra story; isn't Liza Shustal up to some
>privateering or something?"

... I'm having a hard time summarizing how much this doesn't bode well for you nowadays - and, paradoxically, the angrier the show makes me, the less likely the situation is to change. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#10, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by Vorticity on Aug-04-14 at 09:30 PM
In response to message #9
Really it just means I need to get off my butt, go to the TV, get on my butt again, and watch Avatar and Korra. I have no dislike of the material (yet), just not enough frame of reference for the new characters. After all, there are probably more characters from Diqiu in the Symphony now than from Cephiro.

#11, RE: A Successful Test
Posted by Gryphon on Aug-04-14 at 10:35 PM
In response to message #10
>After all, there are probably more characters
>from Diqiu in the Symphony now than from Cephiro.

Possibly (if by "in the Symphony now" you mean appearing regularly in new material), although only a handful of them are from the canon, and they've all come a long way since then.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.