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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited Discussion Forum
Gryphon
Charter Member
6064 posts |
Nov-03-04, 00:17 AM (EST) |
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"tools of the trade"
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I've been asked what I use to write my stuff. Primarily, I use an outdated version of GNU Emacs, a powerful but quirky text editor commonly found on Unix platforms. On both the Linux server that hosts eyrie-productions.com, where final edits happen, and my desktop and notebook Windows XP systems, where most of the front-end work gets done, I maintain working installations of GNU Emacs 19.34, the last version of Emacs to be released before the developers fundamentally changed the way the editor's text mode works. Emacs 19 is very old (the Windows build I have an install archive for was compiled on Sept. 25, 1997), but it's familiar to me and I like the way it works. As I mentioned, the text mode of Emacs 20 and beyond is very different from the way it worked before, and I don't like the differences, so I've stuck with what I like. It's sort of the text-editor equivalent of using an old Underwood manual typewriter in the age of the IBM Selectric, perhaps, but there you go. You have to stick with what works for you... I do some work in Word 2000, but not for the website. All my online work goes straight to raw text. The reason I got into the habit of using the hard-wrap text mode of Emacs, which limits column width to 72, is because I used to post everything to USENET, though I fell out of the habit of doing that midway through the Symphony of the Sword explosion in 2001-2002. Today, I keep doing it because it's still a good width for working in 80-column terminal windows (such as SSH sessions) and the like. I've considered switching over to HTML, but doing markup while writing messes with my groove, and doing it afterward is just a pain. Besides which, I don't like the fact that HTML forces blank-line paragraph breaks; I prefer the more conventional return-and-indent style except when I'm writing correspondence (like, say, an email message, or this post). --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ardaniel
Member since Mar-31-03
63 posts |
Nov-03-04, 01:38 AM (EST) |
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1. "RE: tools of the trade"
In response to message #0
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Depending on where I am and what system I'm working on, I use Word (Mac OS X), or GNU nano 1.2.4 (either on FreeBSD or Mac OS X). I tried to deal with Gryph's freaky Emacs fetish when I signed up and my brain wasn't having it. ;) When I owned PCs, I used OpenOffice and/or AbiWord. Neither of them is where I'd like them to be under OS X, from a usability standpoint, so I don't use them any more. I've got Word pared down to a usable system with a minimum of annoying autocorrections, I've taught it that "Salusian" really is correctly-spelled, etc. Ard |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
6064 posts |
Nov-03-04, 04:50 PM (EST) |
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6. "RE: tools of the trade"
In response to message #5
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LAST EDITED ON Nov-03-04 AT 04:50 PM (EST) >Just one question: You said you used Emacs in Windows. Is this a >special build, or will the original work?I don't think there's anything particularly special about it. I got it from the Free Software Foundation's archives, though they don't appear to have any Windows builds earlier than version 21 any more. >EDIT: Had to change brackets to parenthesis. Nothing major, just the >stuff in brackets didn't show. Weird, but workable. DCForum uses square brackets instead of angle brackets to enclose its HTML-ish internal markup, like the italics tags here, for instance, because angle brackets are the traditional "this line is quoted from the previous message" characters in email and Usenet news, from which boards like DCF evolved. You can get displayable square brackets by invoking them specifically with special character codes. "&l;" and "&r;" will display "[" and "]" respectively. If you just type square brackets with stuff in between, DCF will assume that what's in between is bad markup and discard/ignore it. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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MysticW2002
Member since Jun-30-04
25 posts |
Nov-03-04, 05:45 PM (EST) |
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7. "RE: tools of the trade"
In response to message #5
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LAST EDITED ON Nov-03-04 AT 05:53 PM (EST) Thanks for the info. I -think- that's the same place I got my copy; I might be mistaken, though. Certainly looked like the same site.Anyways... A problem. The file is a .TAR archive. I've extracted it with WinAce... but now, I have a problem. Being unfamiliar with such archives, I now have -no- idea how to run this software. Call me dense, but when the extracted files all show up as "File type: file", I tend to get a little worried. (Then again, this could be because I didn't get a Windows buid...) I'm going to try this with one of the more recent Windows builds, and see if it works better... but, until then, I guess I'm stuck with Notepad/NoteTab Lite. Edit: Someone, please knock the hell out of me. And I used to call myself a nerd... Damned non-windows build... Please, someone, hurt me. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
6064 posts |
Nov-03-04, 06:29 PM (EST) |
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8. "RE: tools of the trade"
In response to message #7
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>Anyways... A problem. The file is a .TAR archive. Uh, yeah, what you have there is a source archive, which, unless you've got a compiler on your Windows machine, isn't gonna work out so well for you. Poke around in the archive; there's a subdirectory in there someplace with windows binary builds in it. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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kairos
Member since Nov-4-04
1 posts |
Nov-04-04, 01:32 AM (EST) |
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10. "RE: tools of the trade"
In response to message #0
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I use emacs, mostly, whatever version happens to be the latest in OS X or whatever debian distro I'm currently using. I don't make anywhere near as much use of the features as Gryph does, so version numbers don't really matter to me. If auto-fill-mode works as I expect, that's about all I ask. For papers and other stuff that needs a little fancier formatting, I typically use TextEdit.app or AbiWord. I have a copy of Word, but I try to avoid it, especially for fiction writing. Just doesn't work that well. Incidentally, I _do_ use blank lines between paragraphs, mainly because that's the easiest format for scripts to handle for auto-conversion and such. (Posting from a new account because I can't remember my old account name, and search doesn't turn up any of my old posts, for some reason.) |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
6064 posts |
Nov-04-04, 09:26 AM (EST) |
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13. "RE: tools of the trade"
In response to message #12
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>Out of curiosity, if it's not too geeky, what aspects of Emacs 20's >text mode don't you like? It's been long enough since the version change that I don't recall specifics. All I remember now is trying to use 20 for a couple of weeks and getting so fed up with it that I quit using it. It seems to me, something like six years later, that fundamental-mode started working like text-mode used to, and text-mode started doing weird things with auto-indenting, plus they changed a number of the command shortcuts I use often. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Captain Willard
Member since Jun-15-04
10 posts |
Nov-11-04, 04:37 AM (EST) |
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18. "RE: tools of the trade"
In response to message #12
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>Out of curiosity, if it's not too geeky, what aspects of Emacs 20's >text mode don't you like? I can't speak for Gryphon, of course, but I do agree that they seriously broke text mode in EMACS 20. Ever since I encountered EMACS 20, I've been fighting the text mode, and I think I've finally got it working right again. The big thing was tabs. In earlier versions, Text mode knew that when you hit the tab key, you wanted either spaces to the next tab setting, or a hard tab character, inserted. EMACS 20 text mode would insert spaces... to the beginning of the next word on the line above. That's OK for fundamental mode, or even in the programming language modes. But it is simply incorrect for text mode. Text mode also (IIRC) changed what it thought a paragraph was, when asked to fill one. It only believes in "paragraphs" with a blank line in between them. To get proper <newline><tab> seperated paragrahs you have to use paragraph-indent-text-mode. And it still has broken tabs. There may have been other changes that annoyed Gryphon, but I haven't done enough writing recently to get bitten by them. Anyway, if anyone's interested I have some elisp for your .emacs that fixes the tab thing. Willard --- Captain Willard Commander, FSLF CompDiv
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Captain Willard
Member since Jun-15-04
10 posts |
Nov-13-04, 04:46 AM (EST) |
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20. "RE: tools of the trade"
In response to message #19
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;I'm not sure how much elisp people know... ;I'd rather over-explain than leave you confused.;;; *.txt uses paragraph indent text ;;; You don't have to have this for the rest of the elisp to work ;;; this should be one line... (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.txt\\'" . paragraph-indent-text-mode) auto-mode-alist)) ;;; tell text modes to use reasonable tabs ;;; all of this goes together in your .emacs (setq-default text-mode-hook 'fix-text-mode) (setq-default paragraph-indent-text-mode-hook 'fix-text-mode) ;;;in pre EMACS 20 days, text-mode-hook usually contained auto-fill-mode ;;;still want to do that (defun fix-text-mode () "fix tab & set auto-fill" (interactive) (auto-fill-mode 1) (fix-tab) ) (defun fix-tab () "fixes tab handling" (interactive) ; (global-set-key "\^I" 'tab-to-tab-stop) (local-set-key "\^I" 'tab-to-tab-stop) ) ;Willard ;Captain Willard ;Commander, FSLF CompDiv |
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Captain Willard
Member since Jun-15-04
10 posts |
Nov-16-04, 05:53 AM (EST) |
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22. "RE: tools of the trade"
In response to message #21
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>Thanks! The tabbing issue has annoyed me for _years_, but not quite >enough to make me figure out how to fix it... You're welcome. Those little snippets of elisp are the results of years worth of trying to fix it. I don't know what the GNU people were smoking. I mean, haven't they ever had to print out something double spaced??? I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one who didn't like the new text mode! >Shalon Wood Willard -- Captain Willard Commander, FSLF CompDiv |
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version 3.3 © 2001
Eyrie Productions,
Unlimited
Benjamin
D. Hutchins
gryphon@eyrie-productions.com
E P U (Colour)
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