WTF RTE

[amberfocus]

Seriously, Rich Text Editor, why will you not work right?  Why are you breaking up paragraphs all weird and adding extra spaces and generally making it impossible to format anything so it looks good!  And LJ why have you not fixed this yet?  It's been a month!

I am going to try to post my first chapter soon.  I will make an attempt at html, but that will take me forever.  I did send it into Teaspoon so who knows if I will get this figured out before it's posted there.  It's a toss up right now of what will take the longest.

Comments

[who-in-whoville.livejournal.com]

You don't post to FF, do you? I've found that taking the HTML from FF, then copying THAT into the HTML editor seems to prevent the formatting problems... just sticking with the HTML. Ugh, it's tedious, but it works.

Anyone out there know of a website where you can post your formatted text and it translates saves it with HTML tags? Is there a way to do that in Word or Pages??? It would make posting to LJ so much easier.

I so so SOOOO share your frustration. I haven't been able to update my Ficlist in a month, and I've stopped copying my stories over from Teaspoon. It isn't worth the hassle. Only posting new stuff here.

[glory_jean]

Novel alert:

LJ will do most of the formatting for you if you post in the HTML side. (Just don't plan on being able to edit. It seems opposed to that a lot of the time.) The line spacing, hard returns seems to be preserved most of the time even now. I gave up on rich text a couple years ago. The only code you need to worry about are

1) italics: < i > .... < /i > (remove spaces)
2) center < center > ... < /center > (remove spaces)
3) lj cut < lj-cut text="" >.... < /lj-cut > (remove spaces)
4) images < img src="" > (remove spaces)
5) pretty links < a href="" > link name < /a > (remove spaces)

If you format for TSP it's pretty much the same with LJ. I use the same text minus the cuts.

I've used google docs in the past for generating (messy) code but they've removed the "view code" command in the newest "improved" version. I can still use the various older versions of g-docs by copying older files in the formats. (So much weirdness in docs.) Open Office also generates code, but it's a pain.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Thank you. You do not know how much this helped me. The only one I couldn't get to work was #5, but I think I did it backwards with the link where the text should have gone. I was so tired of doing it all at that point though I let it go. I will try to figure it out on the next one. But again, thanks because I don't think the chapter ever would have been posted without your nifty cheat sheet.

[glory_jean]

I'm glad this helped. Took me some trial and error to get dealing with LJ to be manageable.

Something else I didn't mention - if you do need to edit and it just messes up the post, what works for me is to edit the original doc you copied from and then open the post, erase all the text, and repaste the whole post again. Seems to work with my masterlist. LJ refuses to let me make the slightest change to it otherwise.

In any event, always use "preview post" beforehand. It will show you any nonsense LJ is going to give you.

and some more code I remembered that might help:

1) bold < b >..... < /b > (remove spaces)
2) lj user < lj user="username" > (remove spaces)

[ramblinsuze.livejournal.com]

I don't know how much formatting you actually use in your fics, but the HTML editor will automatically insert paragraph breaks, etc., so you don't have to code all of that. You'd just need to insert tags for bold text, italics, etc.

As long as your paragraphs are set up like this (with the space between them, vs. indenting), it's really easy to do.

[3pirouette.livejournal.com]

I've had some luck by copying and pasting from my word program (usually open office) to a note pad or word pad first, then re-copying and pasting into LJ. That way I only lose italics and bolds, not formatting. Something about the copy and paste in RTE doesn't like my word programs that much. Not sure if that helps you at all, though... good luck!

[angelfireeast.livejournal.com]

It's been driving me nuts too! Seriously why can't they fix this kind of stuff by now? It's been going on for a long time. A lot of people pay for to use this site. Can't they keep it running a bit better?