A tool for ya'll - to make submitting your writing here easy

Easy and pretty on the eyes.

I don't know about you, but I like reading books on paper, with paragraph indents, etc. Reading online, it's hard to get that, and on a forum, its just not possible....

So tonight I wrote a Visual Basic app to act as a workaround, and I want to share, free of course. It's quite simple:

-Copy your text from your favorite word processor
-Paste into the window of the app
-Select a font and a font size
-Click the button at the bottom to format
-Your text will be formatted to look like this. (hoho shameless plug!)
-And automatically be copied to Clipboard for pasting in your message

How does it manage the indents? By adding three white X's at the start of every paragraph using VBCode.

It also adds line spaces 'tween paragraphs.

I took the liberty of putting AW on it, but with an obvious disclaimer. If this is a problem, please will an admin PM me and I'll "unbrand" it. I won't make it available until I hear word on that.

Here's a screenshot of the app (for PC only):


I know I appreciate the easier to read format, and I hope you might, too.

Available as soon as an admin advises on the logo, etc. Source code available upon request. I'd like to do a web-based version, but I'd have to spend a bit longer on that. Maybe someone with mad php/.net/javascript skills will crank that out

Thanks. The time it took to post my chapter was my motivation.

I took another program I'd written to remove carriage returns and line feeds from text and tweaked it to inject the formatting, so I didn't reinvent the wheel.

I just unbranded the app and put it up for download. It's in a ZIP file, once you download it (to a folder you know you can navigate to), just double click on it to browse it. The file is called "add-indent.exe".

To get it ready to use, once you've opened the ZIP:

Simple method: drag and drop it to your desktop

More exact method:
- Right click on it, and select "Copy"
- Use My Computer to navigate somewhere you want to run it from
- Right click on the file window, and select "Paste"

It can accept around 7,800 words at a go, or about 45,000 characters (including spaces... though I think the actual limit is 65,000, I didn't check it exactly). Your latest story segment will always be stored in c:\aw-post.txt.

Click here for a demonstration of how to use it. (Requires Flash)

It's tiny (7 kb), and virus-free (if downloaded from my web server). Source code is here. If you find any bugs or can think of way to improve it, let me know. If you find it useful, give me a shout.

Enjoy.

James81 said:

Oh yeah, it's pretty awesome.

I just hate to see the guy spend all that time on something that can be fixed so easily.

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It took about 45 minutes total. Actually, none of options in VBulletin (that I've found) allows for the first line paragraph indenting, that makes it format like a book's paragraph. Which is really what the proggy was for (the other formatting options were just easy to throw in).

If I'm missing something on how you can make VBulletin do that, I'm all eyes! :]

JennaGlatzer said:

Very nice of you, Michael. Thanks!

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My pleasure. I've already received back way more than the effort it took... from the content here and individual critiques I've received (and I've only been here a couple days!).

I just noticed a bug, and fixed it.

Bug: If you hit "Clear text" after you've already formatted text, and repaste new text to format, it holds onto the old formatted text. To workaround it, you'd have to close and reopen the program.

I've fixed it and updated the file on my server.

Application :]

nice!

Matera the Mad said:

Bedad and begorrah, not so bad. I can stop wishing I could explain to the benighted Wordites how to use a text editor and whatnot.

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lol

Isaac Espriu said:

Rare is the knave who can use both with equal dexterity.

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Who are you calling a knave?

MacAllister said:

Hi, Michael, and welcome to AW. This was an awfully practical and kind thing to do. Thank you. (And yes - admin is fine with it.)

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Thank you, AW is a wonderful net destination, I'm glad I finally found it. I love writing, and everyone here does, too. That makes for one helluva cool hangout, IMO. Good times, good times, as Isaac recently told me. :]

I'm glad people find the tool as useful as I do. I just updated it once more with feature enhancements that might be useful to some. It still works the same. The updated video demonstration illustrates the features.

JennaGlatzer said:

Can I get you a cup of cocoa?

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Soooo weird you said that... I don't drink coffee: I'm a hot cocoa fiend, and I have a cup almost every night before starting to write. I relate good writing time with hot cocoa! That's too funny! Thanks Jenna, anything I can do to help, let me know. I'm a webby [web tech] from way back.