Avram @ 96: Yeah, but isn't RTF all inline-formatted instead of styled? Styles are the coolest part of MS Word; I was hoping to be able to (for example) make emphasized text show up as underlined instead of italicized, mess with the way blockquotes and bullets show up, etc. (And does RTF do footnotes correctly?)
I hope I'm mistaken, though, because that would be sweet.
Avram @85: Yup, I'm a Markdown user too. I'd actually been considering learning LaTeX and writing in that, which, of course, would have been completely insane. All I really needed were some simple machine-readable placeholders for things like emphasis, headers, and footnotes.
I'm actually aiming for pretty much the same thing as Charlie Stross is with that POD <--> OpenDoc converter he's playing with (see #11). What I really want is a good way to build a rigorously-styled MS Word or OpenDoc document out of Markdown-formatted (or Markdown-like) text. Even though I prefer not to write in a word processor, the text is going to have to end up in one eventually. It'd be cool to do that in a way that takes advantage of Word's nice features. Maybe I'll have to eventually write one.
(Also: I was impressed with TextMate; it was one of the big contenders when I was figuring out what I wanted. Didn't match up with my brain quite the way BB did, but a damn fine app nonetheless.)
Graydon(33): Precisely. I suspect that's why it took me two seasons (or wait, was it longer?) to pick my weapon of choice.
Mike Ford(14): Wow, no kidding?! I used WordPro 96 for all my writing on our family's first PC! I always liked it; I remember it being a little more agile and a little less aggressive than MS Word.
That program was also my first introduction to file format lock-in--we managed to lose the install disc sometime between the point where we became dependent on it and the point where we had to wipe the hard drive and re-install everything. I still remember frantically converting the whole family's documents, one file at a time, to MS Word files.
Everyone: Thanks, this is fascinating. Keep 'em coming!
Speaking of machinery.
I spent a fair amount of time over the spring and summer trying out various text editors, so I've been thinking a lot about tools. What software do people around here do their typing in? What does it do for you that makes you prefer it?
Not to spark an editor war, or anything; I'm just really curious to see a wider cross-section than my own front yard/recent college bubble. (Undergrads all seem to use MS Word.)
I'll go first: I ended up deciding I really like BBEdit. All the amenities of a programmer's text editor, but accessible in a way that's kind of hard to describe. It also integrates really well with various Mac-isms, and (the real kicker) just tends to work the way my brain does. A very touchy-feely sort of preference.
Mary.188: Blue Heron Bakery is a natural-type bakery in Olympia, Washington. You can buy their food at the Farmer's Market, at their bakery out on Mud Bay Road, at the Olympia Food Co-Op, and some other places I'm forgetting. (And through the mail via their website.) I was born in 1982, so their food has been kind of a fixture in my life for, er, ever. Which is why I'm fascinated by JESR having been around when they were scrappy outlaw bread-traffickers.
[JESR.166] Wow, you were on board from the beginning? High fives.
Blue Heron is SO awesome. I've been seriously considering mail-ordering a big sack of Rebel Crunch, because granola apparently sucks everywhere but the South Sound. (There's always making your own, but mine came out kind of burny the last few times. And I'm not sure how to go about duplicating whatever date-magic they're using.)
Also: Their spinach/feta turnovers. Hot damn.
On a previous thread fork: Larry(@126), I usually end up using non-trans-fat margarine (Earth Balance is the only one we've found that melts and doesn't taste gross), but for banana and pumpkin bread (and affiliated muffins and fellow-travelers), we discovered that a mixture of canola oil and unsweetened applesauce works startlingly well.
What I'd really like to do is work for some high-level vegan bakery (f'rex, Blue Heron in Oly or the Hard Times in Minnie) for a while, because I just know they're using some really clever tricks I haven't been taught yet. (Some of which are bound to be portable to regular animal-based baking.)
And hempseed's really better anyhow, if it's Omegas that you're cruising for. (Though it's infuriatingly--albeit predictably--expensive.)
Flaxseed has this funny gelatinous coating on it, which, when activated with water, can sub for eggs in a fair pile of recipes. The way I learned it was to grind a tablespoon of flaxseed and soak in a quarter-cup of cold water, but this variation sounds promising as well. Won't make meringue, but it WILL yield pumpkin bread you can feed to your vegans.
These [comment moved to front page] markers are going to look rather odd for the archive-readers of the future. May I humbly suggest marking them up as links to the relevant posts?
To admit it, or not to admit it...?
I only discovered the album in 2003. It still sounded ahead of its time.
Linkmeister: They shell out royalties to the copyright holders.
Aaaaah! I remember that freaky dragon! (BoingBoing?)
Me, I favor ForecastFox, since I have Firefox open 70% of the time anyways. It's also pretty configurable, and cross-platform to boot.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 12 |
| 2005 | 2 |
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