Free SF Novel Online, with Contributions from 2 Tor UK authors

[garygibsonsf]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

You have a little square next to every ? (question mark) character in the text, is that deliberate?

Cripes, definitely not. Which format did you download? And what are you reading it on?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by garygibsonsf

Cripes, definitely not. Which format did you download? And what are you reading it on?

On the blog you posted.

[garygibsonsf]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

On the blog you posted.

I'd have to say I had a look at the online version of the book on my own computer and two others and saw no problem. Perhaps it's an issue with the fonts on your own?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by garygibsonsf

I'd have to say I had a look at the online version of the book on my own computer and two others and saw no problem. Perhaps it's an issue with the fonts on your own?

Possibly, but it would be more likely to be browser dependent than anything else. Looking at it in a different browser I don't see the squares.

I had a look at the source code, and you have * inserted either just before or just after the ? characters. Like this:

I thought to ask: "Where did you begin?*"<br />
<br />

If you copy it into notepad you get a square as well, which is why I thought it might have been deliberate.

[mr ploppy]

Bah. I can't get it to paste properly in here, it turns it into an asterisk.

Take the spaces out of these characters for what you have next to the ? characters:

& # 8 2 0 4

[garygibsonsf]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Bah. I can't get it to paste properly in here, it turns it into an asterisk.

Take the spaces out of these characters for what you have next to the ? characters:

& # 8 2 0 4

I suspect this is getting into areas involving character codes where I'm far from expert. For what it's worth, I'm looking mostly at it on firefox running on a macbook. I'd be curious to know if anyone else has the same problem, but maybe if I tried stripping those numbers out altogether it would fix it. Mind you, I didn't actually put them in. They look like there were automatically generated in some way, maybe by blogger, where it's hosted, so maybe they'd just reappear again.

Edit:I just took a look at the source code in Blogger, and the characters aren't there. So Blogger is generating them automatically whenever stuff is posted up. I suspect maybe I won't be able to fix it, I'm afraid.

[gwynevans]

It's a 'ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER' unicode char (http://www.fileformat.info/info/unic...200c/index.htm) so I guess that the fact that it's visible is down to the browser either doing the wrong thing or possibly having it's defaults being overridden to display it due to odd choice of browser encoding or font.

It's to suggest that the characters preceding it and following it should not try to join or ligate, but shouldn't itself show up...

[AFK_Matrix]

Hi Gary,

I have downloaded Judgement from Smashwords and look forward to reading it. I was just wondering if you were going to put any of your other books on there, I ask as I prefer my books to be DRM free? Would love to read Stealing Light, Nova War and even your Angel Stations book.

[garygibsonsf]

Originally Posted by AFK_Matrix

Hi Gary,

I have downloaded Judgement from Smashwords and look forward to reading it. I was just wondering if you were going to put any of your other books on there, I ask as I prefer my books to be DRM free? Would love to read Stealing Light, Nova War and even your Angel Stations book.

I'm afraid not, since those books of mine (as opposed to Fergus's) are contracted to Pan Macmillan in the UK, and I have no control over how they're sold. I wouldn't mind maybe one of them sometime in the future being a freebie, but that would depend on whether it made sound business sense to do so, and there are currently a lot of reasons not to do that.

You can, however, buy ebooks of Stealing Light and Nova War at UK-based sites like Waterstones and WHSmiths Ebooks. They have DRM, unless you buy them direct from PanMacmillan.com, in which case they don't (nor do any of the ebooks sold by Pan Mac direct from their website in the UK). They're admittedly a bit more expensive than elsewhere but, like I say, no DRM - and no geo restrictions, last I heard, anyway.

[AFK_Matrix]

Ok fair enough Gary but I wasn't wanting them free on Smashwords, I would happily pay for them. I will look into getting Stealing Light from WHsmith but will wait on Nova Wars as its personally too much for me to pay at the moment, will wait till it drops in price.

[garygibsonsf]

Originally Posted by AFK_Matrix

Ok fair enough Gary but I wasn't wanting them free on Smashwords, I would happily pay for them. I will look into getting Stealing Light from WHsmith but will wait on Nova Wars as its personally too much for me to pay at the moment, will wait till it drops in price.

I was just thinking out loud there when I talked about the freebies thing, but my fault for not reading your comment properly. Nova War's out in paperback in the UK in July, I think, so with luck the price of the ebook should drop about then.