Yes I am a gay person, a happy person and I like people that are happy and gay, but I am not yet an Eunuch. I am learning to appreciate other versions as well.

I will check out those story sites - thanks - N3RF

It looks like the vote is going for "traditional" style. If that's the case, I hope traditional doesn't end up being center justified paragraphs like the last story I submitted ended up being formatted. Paragraphs should be left justified, not center justified.

As far as the reader's need being paramont, if no one writes stories, there won't be anything to read, will there?

WHAT "uniform look" ? I have NEVER seen any other story formatted the way "The Witch's Curse" was. It hasn't appeared in the Archive yet, but the version which appeared immediately after I submitted it looks, as I said in my e-mail letter to IEunuch, like a long free-verse poem. The paragraphs are centered instead of being justified.

If you really want a uniform look, why not use something conventional such as left-margin justified with paragraphs indented and separated by one blank line ? Also, have some pity on the elderly and use type no smaller than 12-point.

If you are trying to discourage authors from submitting stories, capricious illogical formatting is surely one way to do it.

Bagoas (imported) wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2006 6:39 pm WHAT "uniform look" ? I have NEVER seen any other story formatted the way "The Witch's Curse" was. It hasn't appeared in the Archive yet, but the version which appeared immediately after I submitted it looks, as I said in my e-mail letter to IEunuch, like a long free-verse poem. The paragraphs are centered instead of being justified.

If you really want a uniform look, why not use something conventional such as left-margin justified with paragraphs indented and separated by one blank line ? Also, have some pity on the elderly and use type no smaller than 12-point.

If you are trying to discourage authors from submitting stories, capricious illogical formatting is surely one way to do it.

If you haven't submitted a story since this change was made, you probably don't know what Bagoas and I are talking about. None of those stories have yet appeared. What we saw might not be how stories are ultimately formatted, but if they are, I don't think the readers are going to like it either.

Alright! I just dipped back into the Archive and chose a dozen stories at random. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM was left-margin justified. THAT is traditional. If the format is going to be "traditional", as the voting seems to indicate, then the new stories must be made to conform to past practise, and past practise is overwhelmingly left-margin justified, NOT center-justified.

Slammr (imported) wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2006 5:33 pm It looks like the vote is going for "traditional" style. If that's the case, I hope traditional doesn't end up being center justified paragraphs like the last story I submitted ended up being formatted. Paragraphs should be left justified, not center justified.

As far as the reader's need being paramont, if no one writes stories, there won't be anything to read, will there?

I have to agree with your distaste for center justified text. One of the first things I do when I copy a story is to ensure that it is left justified.

Regards,

Lest anything I've posted seem to be criticism of IEunuch, I want to say that was never my intent. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for all he's done. I have no objection to the format of my recently submitted story -- as it is now -- or to the format of the other recently submitted stories. I would prefer for authors to have more control over formatting, but I also realize some might go overboard. I'll go along with whatever is decided.

So if I was Right-Handed / Right Minded - wouldn't RIGHT HAND justification be rightly so be -- JUSTIFIED -- ?? N3RF

n3rf (imported) wrote: Thu Nov 23, 2006 12:54 pm So if I was Right-Handed / Right Minded - wouldn't RIGHT HAND justification be rightly so be -- JUSTIFIED -- ?? N3RF

No. In English we read from left to right generally. Right justified might be justified if you wrote and read in mirror image as a truly dedicated lefty might. See the works of DaVinci. Written in mirrored script....

I do apologize for the tone in the first post. It was not my intention to impugn any of the fine writers here at the Eunuch Archive, or any of those who have replied to this thread.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that while the old system did work, there were some issues (I feel) in regards to how the HTML of the stories was output. One of the things I am aiming for is for the stories to be parsed in fully-compliant (or near-compliant) XHTML. This is proving to be a larger challenge than I had anticipated.

I should note that while the formatting was not what is traditional for fiction (no spaces between paragraphs, first line of a paragraph indented), to date I have not seen any stories that were center-justified. That is something that would most definitely be corrected prior to the story being released to the general public. While there are largish margins, as far as I can tell in both IE7 and Firefox2 the stories are properly justified.

One of the hardest parts of all this is not to edit a story so that it looks right, but to find a way to automate this process so that human intervention is only rarely required. For now, I've inserted a small piece of CSS formatting which will render stories without spaces between paragraphs, and indent the first line of each paragraph. If the authors wish to retain the space between paragraphs, this can be arranged for all incoming stories as well.

This does have it's issues, however. It means that every paragraph will appear like that, unless you specify (using the 'Format' pulldown) that something is to be a heading (for chapter titles, etc).

The submission engine does strip some tags from stories. Among others (some are stripped for security reasons) are the <font> and <span> tags. Word seems to love those tags for some reason, and tends to sadly abuse HTML in general.

As for feedback vs complaints from readers, sadly many seem to find it easier to complain than compliment. I don't know why, but it does seem to be a facet of humanity. I hope that the temporary fix for the feedback system will allow at least some reader response.

Again, I apologize for any offense I may have given the wonderful and generous authors we have here at the Eunuch Archive. They are a precious resource and we could not do without them.