21.404 an editorial plea

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 21, No. 404.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
  www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:49:59 +0000
         From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
         Subject: an editorial plea

Dear colleagues,

This is a plea from your editor, who for noble reasons hereby puts on
the robe of the long-suffering, self-sacrificing public servant. (I
do not in fact suffer. Rather I get annoyed. And I'd hardly say that
editing Humanist is an act of self-sacrifice, though some of my time
goes to the care of Humanist that might be spent drinking coffee and
checking out my neighbours, or whatever. But please assume for now
that I am wearing said robe, play along with me and see what emotions
and consequent actions result.)

Some contributors to Humanist, whose identities will not be revealed,
compose their postings in a wordprocessor, using all the glories of
its formatting options (bullet-points, proper quotation marks &c &c),
and then paste the result directly into their e-mail client and send
it off. What said individuals apparently do not realise is that in
doing so they paste in all sorts of proprietary formatting codes that
my software doesn't like, i.e. these codes become visible nonsense to
me. I then have to take the content of each of these messages,
massage it with a text-editor, then paste the corrected content back
into my e-mail client for the actual posting. Sometimes several
search-and-replace operations are involved. Frankly it's a hassle.
Now while I admit that suffering this hassle may improve my soul,
teach me patience and love for my fellow human beings great
enough to surmount considerable annoyance with them, I'd rather not
be improved in such ways early each morning. As I'm sure everyone
knows, ordinary life comes up with quite enough improving tests of that sort.

Rumour has it that improved software for Humanist will come along
someday soon. Perhaps then I will be shielded from the slings and
arrows of outrageous formatting. I will let you know when I feel thus
protected, and then you can try your worst. But meanwhile, please,
take care with your special effects. Such care will be felt, and
this, I think, will work marvellous improvements to my ability to
maintain emotional equilibrium. Who knows, joy might even follow.

Yours,
WM

Willard McCarty | Professor of Humanities Computing | Centre for
Computing in the Humanities | King's College London |
http://staff.cch.kcl.ac.uk/~wmccarty/. Et sic in infinitum (Fludd 1617, p. 26).
Received on Mon Dec 10 2007 - 04:28:12 EST