Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 394.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
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Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
[1] From: Kirk Lowery <klowery_at_whi.wts.edu> (52)
Subject: Re: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
[2] From: "Dennis Cintra Leite" <Dennis_at_fgvsp.br> (10)
Subject: RE: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
[3] From: "Lisa L. Spangenberg" (48)
<lisa_at_digitalmedievalist.com>
Subject: Re: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
[4] From: Martin Holmes <mholmes_at_uvic.ca> (17)
Subject: Re: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
[5] From: "Sharon Johnson" <sharon.johnson_at_sbl-site.org> (11)
Subject: RE: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
[6] From: stefan gradmann <stefan.gradmann_at_rrz.uni- (25)
hamburg.de>
Subject: Re: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:35:33 +0000
From: Kirk Lowery <klowery_at_whi.wts.edu>
Subject: Re: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
> >Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 08:25:51 -0400
> >From: Russ Hunt <hunt_at_stu.ca>
> > >To: Katharine Patterson <katpatte_at_interchange.ubc.ca>
> >
> >Katharine --
> >
> >This better? Feel free to cut further.
> >
> >-- Russ
> >
> >A Plague on Both Your Houses
> >
> >I don't know how many folks there are out there who will have
> >confronted this, either as writers or teachers, but it has
> >become increasingly apparent to me that we're dealing with an
> >industry that wants us to go back to about the fifties in terms
> >of composition theory. Word processors and HTML text editors are
> >increasingly, and inexorably, becoming text display manipulators
> >rather than text processors. Editing something produced in any
> >of the current version is more difficult by a factor of about
> >five than it was five years ago.
This is a sociological problem, not a technical one. Word processors and
html text editors can be used to create simple text. But all that "eye
candy" is just too tempting and distracting to the student/user -- I
include myself in that group! I will often just open up a plain text
processor to write the first draft/outline of a document, and only later
import it into the appropriate tool for display. This allows me to focus
upon *what* I want to say: logic before rhetoric.
> >(3) does anybody know about a program that'll strip out the
> >useless code from a M$Word-created HTML file? (as a plain ascii
> >file the text in question is about 17K; in its full flower, as
> >published to HTML by Word, it's 48K). (By the way, I've tried
> >M$Word's "filtered" HTML and Dreamweaver's HTML cleanup.
> >Neither touch the mess.)
> >
> ></rant>
If I were in this situation, I would *require* students to use only a text
editor: Notepad, Wordpad, emacs, vi(m), etc. Actually any programmer's
editor would work just fine, and there are a plethora of them out there for
all platforms and budgets.
Keep content (text) creation a separate step from display: first, create
text and turn that in for critique. Then give it back for the student to
pretty it up for web, hardcopy, etc.
Hope this helps,
Kirk
--
The oboe's a horn made of wood.
I'd play you a tune if I could,
But the reeds are a pain,
And the fingering's insane.
It's the ill wind that no one blows good.
--Ogden Nash
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:36:02 +0000
From: "Dennis Cintra Leite" <Dennis_at_fgvsp.br>
Subject: RE: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
1. from any Windows application to any other Window application:
a) select the entire text,
b) copy to clipboard,
c) insert from clipboard to notepad.
d) Copy again to clipboard and
e) paste into whatever application you wish.
2. In Word its far simpler:
a) go to File/save as..
b) choose plain text
Hope this helps
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:36:26 +0000
From: "Lisa L. Spangenberg" <lisa_at_digitalmedievalist.com>
Subject: Re: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
Russ Hunt Wrote:
>Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 08:25:51 -0400
>From: Russ Hunt <hunt_at_stu.ca>
>To: Katharine Patterson <katpatte_at_interchange.ubc.ca>
<snip of a deserved rant on the idiocies of bloated text editors/word
processors>
>So I guess I have three questions:
>
>(1) has anybody else encountered this, or is this just a
>function of the fact that I'm a fossil and still want text
>markup to be comprehensible?
I've encountered it. Part of the problem is that one must locate two, and
possibly three, places in MS Word to turn off the autoformatting of lists
and such. The places depend on the version of MS Word in question.
I used to hand code about a hundred or so syllabi every quarter, so I
truly feel your pain.
>(2) does anyone know about publications or resources on the
>migration of word processors toward text display and away from,
>well, word processing?
Michael E. Cohen wrote a series of articles years ago for UCLA's Humanities
Computing Center on just this issue. If you're genuinely interested, email
me off list with a postal address and I'll send you a copy. Since they were
done in QuarkExpress c. 1991, I'm pretty sure it's too time consuming to
convert the file.
>(3) does anybody know about a program that'll strip out the
>useless code from a M$Word-created HTML file? (as a plain ascii
>file the text in question is about 17K; in its full flower, as
>published to HTML by Word, it's 48K). (By the way, I've tried
>M$Word's "filtered" HTML and Dreamweaver's HTML cleanup.
>Neither touch the mess.)
On the Mac the text editor BBEdit Pro will strip out most markup up with a
single click. I suspect that there's a similar text editor for Windows that
does much the same thing. I know there are Perl scripts that do this.
For this kind of bulk work, I came to depend on lots of automation in
BBedit. I suspect that part of the problem with wrapping was an invisible
bit of binary data (things like line feeds are still in MSWord files). I
rely on a "zap gremlins" tool in BBEdit for just such issues.
I'm sure there's something similar for Windows users.
Dean Allen also has a web page that will do much of the stripping and clean
up of word files, though you may need the "paid" version.
http://textism.com/wordcleaner/
>-- Russ Hunt
>St. Thomas University
>http://www.StThomasU.ca/~hunt/
--
Lisa L. Spangenberg | Digital medievalist
Instructional Technology | http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/it/
My opinions are my own. | Who else would want them?
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:36:45 +0000
From: Martin Holmes <mholmes_at_uvic.ca>
Subject: Re: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
Hi there,
> >(3) does anybody know about a program that'll strip out the
> >useless code from a M$Word-created HTML file? (as a plain ascii
> >file the text in question is about 17K; in its full flower, as
> >published to HTML by Word, it's 48K). (By the way, I've tried
> >M$Word's "filtered" HTML and Dreamweaver's HTML cleanup.
> >Neither touch the mess.)
If DreamWeaver won't do it any more (it used to have a really good function
for removing MSWord nonsense), then copying and pasting into Notepad is the
best option. If you have students who can't create Web pages without using
MSWord, then your best bet is to have them create text files with Notepad.
Web browsers display text very nicely.
And plain text is also markup, as we know. All those punctuation marks,
capitals, carriage returns, not to mention the lexis and grammar. Lots of
room for self-expression there.
Cheers,
Martin
--[5]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:37:16 +0000
From: "Sharon Johnson" <sharon.johnson_at_sbl-site.org>
Subject: RE: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
I haven't tried it with all programs but if I want to strip out formatting I
either copy and paste the document into Macromedia's Homesite (if I want to
mark it up to html or xml) or copy and use the "paste special" instead of
paste. You can choose "unformatted text" as a paste option. If you already
have Dreamweaver, Homesite is usually bundled with it.
Sharon Johnson
Web Site Manager
http://www.sbl-site.org
Society of Biblical Literature
825 Houston Mill Road
Atlanta, GA 30329
--[6]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:38:21 +0000
From: stefan gradmann <stefan.gradmann_at_rrz.uni-hamburg.de>
Subject: Re: 18.389 on composition theory & tools for writing
Russ,
did you try OpenOffice.org (-> www.openoffice.org)? That might fix your
problem: OO is pretty good at converting M$ formats and can even output
plain XML if you wish. Give it a try!
Best regards -- Stefan Gradmann
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________________________________________________________
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth,
more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is
subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible,
thought is merciless to privilege, established
institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks
into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is
great and swift and free, the light of the world,
and the chief glory of man.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
________________________________________________________
Received on Thu Dec 02 2004 - 02:51:18 EST
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