The Vent and Rant Thread

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by mrscoach

THIS I would and have gladly responded to. There is a separate number I call to report downed lines (especially if still live)and poles. I would also send an officer or two, depending on the area and the need for traffic control. Neighbors are always helpful on telling you whose vehicle it is, too.

I thought you would like that one.
Now a couple of months back, not only did some power lines go down but also the poles they were attached too. That was done during a wind storm.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by mrscoach

THIS I would and have gladly responded to. There is a separate number I call to report downed lines (especially if still live)and poles. I would also send an officer or two, depending on the area and the need for traffic control. Neighbors are always helpful on telling you whose vehicle it is, too.

No need for traffic control at that hour. The line didn't go down. It just tripped the transformer. Power was back on within a minute.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I've always loved Notepad if for no other reason than it doesn't do formatting beyond allowing global changes in font and don't sizes. It comes in quite handy when copying formatted material when you want the information but not the decorations and links. Sure, Word offers a choice when pasting to keep the source our destination formatting, but that's an additional hoop to jump through that isn't present in Notepad.

<shrug> Notepad is a plain text editor. Plain ASCII text doesn't do decorations, links, and the like.

For the vast majority of what I do, a plain text editor is fine. I simply replace Notepad with something else. There are many Notepad replacements out there. The one I use is an open source product called Notepad2-mod It's a fork of an open source product called Notepad2 by Florian Balmer. Notepad2 uses the Scintilla edit control, and offers syntax highlighting for an assortment of programming languages, code folding, and an assortment of other features. It can be set via a registry hack to replace standard Windows Notepad, and I do so. It invokes as close to instantly as makes no difference.

Unfortunately, the Word apps for iOS and Android don't open Notepad files, so if I want to open a file with one of my mobile Word apps, it can't be in plain text format. At least, they didn't open those type files last time I checked.

Which apps are you running? On my Android tablet, I run a freeware office suite called WPS Office+PDF from a Chinese vendor. (Ad supported, but so far they are unobtrusive and don't get in my way.) It handles Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, Power Point presentations and PDF files (though I use something else for PDFs and avoid PowerPoint like the plague.) It opened plain text files the last I looked, but I have several dedicated plain text editors installed as well. My usual choice fort plain text is 920 Editor, another open source product.

MS does have freeware official Word and Excel apps for Android. I looked at them and they technically run, but are big and assume you have a fast and powerful device.
______
Dennis

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ApK

Did you ever explain what you meant?

Nope. I suck.

Basically, all I meant is:

When you are typing along in a word-processor, the only time you will yourself, key the hyphen character, is if you are using a word like, well, word-processor. Or stay-at-home. Etc. You don't type along, get to the end of the line and then type a hyphen mid-word because you ran out of room. Right?

Right. The hyphens that you type, are hard hyphens. They won't disappear, when you change the margins, or anything else. They're permanent. Part of the manuscript, no matter what.

But, in Word or other word processors, if you have a typed document, and the line runs out of line, a word will be hyphenated. e.g., hyphen-ated. You didn't type it--but it appears. That's a hyphen created by the software. If you move the word, or change your margins, it disappears. That's a soft hyphen. It only exists when needed, and doesn't when it oughtn't be. It's software-created, not typed by humans.

Thus, I was kvetching because somehow, someway, hard hyphens appeared in this woman's book. Dunno how. But some poor schmuck will have to clean them up, because you can't leave them. You can't just S&R (search and replace) because, see above, the type of hard-hyphens you need. Yes, there are some searches you can do, using regex (Search and replace in code, basically) that can eliminate some of the tedium--but not much. And trust me--you can't ask the clients to do that; they'll never figure it out.

That's why I was bitching.

Hitch

[ApK]

Re: Hard hyphens, Yeah, that's what we thought.

Re: Notepad alternatives, Notepad++ is my text editor of choice.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Hitch

We do this all the time, anyway, because of course, we carry them in the car/truck, whenever we're going anyplace--only a moron drives in AZ, in the summer, without a ton of spare water just in case.

I also freeze these and put them inside our cooler bags--the ones I take to the grocery/Costco, when I'm getting groceries. Especially where we live, where nothing is less than 40-60 minutes away from the house--you have to keep the fridge/freezer stuff cool/cold/frozen until you get home. LOL, the trunk of my car looks like I'm a survivalist--chiller bag, frozen bottles of water, other survival gear in case the car croaks in midsummer when it's 120F...frozen bottles of water are a girl's best friend, out here. (Of course, we carried them, as water, in WY as well. Same reason, multiplied--vast distances where there won't be a house for 50 miles. You gotta be prepared.)

Hitch

Yep. We do the same with the coolers. Frozen water in plastic bottles are great.
We have a big cooler for shopping that we throw a few of them in to keep the meat cool. I keep about six not in use and their are about six always around the food in the freezer for prevention. I also have a bag of ice in the freezer as I'm a ice addict. I just crunch ice to keep me calm, to relax me and it keeps me cool when it's hot. I go through a bag in a week.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Nope. I suck.

Basically, all I meant is:

When you are typing along in a word-processor, the only time you will yourself, key the hyphen character, is if you are using a word like, well, word-processor. Or stay-at-home. Etc. You don't type along, get to the end of the line and then type a hyphen mid-word because you ran out of room. Right?

Right. The hyphens that you type, are hard hyphens. They won't disappear, when you change the margins, or anything else. They're permanent. Part of the manuscript, no matter what.

But, in Word or other word processors, if you have a typed document, and the line runs out of line, a word will be hyphenated. e.g., hyphen-ated. You didn't type it--but it appears. That's a hyphen created by the software. If you move the word, or change your margins, it disappears. That's a soft hyphen. It only exists when needed, and doesn't when it oughtn't be. It's software-created, not typed by humans.

Thus, I was kvetching because somehow, someway, hard hyphens appeared in this woman's book. Dunno how. But some poor schmuck will have to clean them up, because you can't leave them. You can't just S&R (search and replace) because, see above, the type of hard-hyphens you need. Yes, there are some searches you can do, using regex (Search and replace in code, basically) that can eliminate some of the tedium--but not much. And trust me--you can't ask the clients to do that; they'll never figure it out.

That's why I was bitching.

Hitch

I would use a hard hyphen if I was on an old-fashioned typewriter but not a word processor or word processing program.

Thanks for clarifying.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ApK

Re: Hard hyphens, Yeah, that's what we thought.

Re: Notepad alternatives, Notepad++ is my text editor of choice.

I'm a NoteTab Pro person, myself.

Hitch

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ApK

Re: Notepad alternatives, Notepad++ is my text editor of choice.

I have that here, among others. (I collect text editors.) It's lovely, but simply more than I need for most cases.

I do vaguely miss the tabbed interface in Notepad++, but not enough to matter, because I don't normally do things where having multiple files open in tabs is useful. I normally have one file open at a time, and a tabbed interface is irrelevant.

One major use case for Notepad2-mod is as a plugin in my browser. Firefox has a nifty extension called It's All Text. Text boxes on websites get a little Edit button whose screen location is configurable. Click it, and whatever was entered in the text box gets copied into the text editor you configure it to use. Enter and edit to your heart's content. When doen, hit Save, and the edited content gets pasted into the text box. It's a boon on sites that implement minimal editing features for text boxes.

(Works fine on MR - here it is editing this reply before submitting.)
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Thus, I was kvetching because somehow, someway, hard hyphens appeared in this woman's book. Dunno how.

I'm trying to imagine how your client managed it. What word processor created the file you got with this nonsense?
______
Dennis

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'm trying to imagine how your client managed it. What word processor created the file you got with this nonsense?
______
Dennis

NO freaking idea. I asked, and so far, [...crickets...]. Nothing unusual about that, though. I ask things like this, all the time. "When you learned how to use the word-processor, didn't anyone tell you to let the text line-wrap?" (That one is particularly boggling when HALF of it line-wraps, and half of it is used like a typewriter--typety-type-type-type-ENTER, typety-type-type-type-ENTER...lather, rinse,repeat, scream.)

Or the one where they don't use tabs or styles, but hit the spacebar--different amounts of spaces, each time. That's a personal fave. OR, when they have the narrative text indented--but dialog paras, not.

There's no end, there really isn't. Just when you think that you've seen it all--something new happens. Charlie probably remembers that one I posted a few years ago--the one where the pilcrow somehow ended up at the LEFT margin? Before the text line? I still have no idea how the hell that one happened. That shouldn't exist, by any stretch of the imagination.

{shrug}. It's just another thing that shows up to drive us nuts.


Hitch

[CRussel]

FWIW, Hitch, that kind of S&R is possible in Word, though it's not the kind of S&R that most people do. I can think of two ways to get at it myself, one based on GUI S&R, and one using a macro. (And you can do it pretty safely, since it involves the end of the line on the viewed page, which Word knows about.) Of course, it's fairly routine with a good RegEx if you were working with a simple text file. And if wishes were horses, beggers would ride. (Rmember, Hitch, Word is my tool. And I'm a lazy writer who uses macros to make life easier.)

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by CRussel

FWIW, Hitch, that kind of S&R is possible in Word, though it's not the kind of S&R that most people do. I can think of two ways to get at it myself, one based on GUI S&R, and one using a macro. (And you can do it pretty safely, since it involves the end of the line on the viewed page, which Word knows about.) Of course, it's fairly routine with a good RegEx if you were working with a simple text file. And if wishes were horses, beggers would ride. (Rmember, Hitch, Word is my tool. And I'm a lazy writer who uses macros to make life easier.)

I won't forget that, Charlie--trust me.

(I do actually use that type of regex, in Word, but I confess, I'm not that awesome at it.)

Hitch

[fum]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

...(I collect text editors.) ...
______
Dennis

Then perhaps you can help, with a little rant I have: I'm working in the softwarebusiness in Denmark. The state requires for our systems to be archieved, but in an xml-format. Right now I am dealing with an xml file >20gb. And I need to edit the first line. Grrrrrrr. I haven't found an editor that can handle that kind of file. You know any?

[ApK]

Originally Posted by fum

Then perhaps you can help, with a little rant I have: I'm working in the softwarebusiness in Denmark. The state requires for our systems to be archieved, but in an xml-format. Right now I am dealing with an xml file >20gb. And I need to edit the first line. Grrrrrrr. I haven't found an editor that can handle that kind of file. You know any?

Try a hex editor, like:
https://www.hhdsoftware.com/free-hex-editor

BTW, keeping anything important in a single 20gb file scares the heck out me. Maybe I'm just old.