From pawright@eyrie.org Thu Jun 28 19:43:06 2001 Path: news.bu.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!howland.erols.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!nntp.stanford.edu!not-for-mail From: pawright@eyrie.org (Vulcana) Newsgroups: alt.toys.transformers.fanfic Subject: [FAQLET] How to post a fanfic Date: 24 Jun 2001 07:00:12 GMT Organization: The Eyrie Lines: 296 Message-ID: <9h435s$a5o$1@nntp.Stanford.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: haven.stanford.edu Keywords: fanfic,FAQ Xref: news.bu.edu alt.toys.transformers.fanfic:5940 FAQLET: How to post a FANFIC The object of this FAQ is to provide the reader with sufficent information to post his/her own fanfic. 1.0 USENET 1.1 What is a news group? 1.2 What is propogation? 1.3 What are the "rules" of posting? 2.0 FONTS 3.0 How to compose the fanfic using 3.1 vi 3.2 pico 3.3 MS WORD (Windows & MAC) 4.0 How to post a fanfic using 4.1 trn 4.2 Netscape ===================================================================== 1.0 USENET USENET isn't one particular object. Instead, it is a data stream/bulletin board system. It doesn't exist in one place at one time. Instead, it exists on thousands of computers all at the same time. The internet was originally part of ARPA Net, a US Department of Defense research and development network. Thus the network was designed to automatically route around obstructions. 1.1 What is a Newsgroup? A newsgroup on USENET is a container to hold articles on similar topics. For example, when Alt.Toys.Transformers was created, it was intended to hold articles on the topic of Transformers. Now it has two subgroups, Marketplace and Fanfic, which are designed to hold their respective segments of the topic group Transformers. 1.2 What is Propogation? Because a Newsgroup doesn't exist in one place (it is a grouping of a data stream), an article posted to the group in one place might take a while to reach another place. The movement of an article from one system to another system is called propogation. This becomes a consideration when posting an article, because not everyone will see the same article at the same time. When an article is seen on a server is dependent (network-wise) on the distance the server is from the originating computer. The order in which messages are seen ary according to how the receiving computer receives them. Just because you sent out Message #1 and then Message #2 does not ensure that all receiving sites will display them in that order. 1.3 What are the "rules" of posting? Well, there aren't any rules per se, but there are things you can do which will make your post easier to read. That is the subject of this FAQLET. LINE LENGTH: When posting an article, you should restrict the length of each line to between 70 and 75 characters. The origin of this restriction is from the days of VT100 terminals. The old text terminals were capable of displaying a maximum of 80 characters. 5 characters were subtracted from this amount for quoted follow ups, as quoting a previous article would increase the line length. To ensure the entire line could be displayed, the initial line length was restricted. Many newsreaders still enforce this limit, which leads to odd line-wrapping problems in some posts. (I play it safe and restrict my lines to 60-70 characters. Better having a short line than weird wrapping.) ASCII TEXT: The odds are the computer you are using to post is not the same as the computer someone else is using to read. The only thing common between the computers is ASCII, which stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. With the wide variety of computers on the internet, you should restrict your post to ASCII. That way, everyone can read it without making a special effort. Specifically, this means: If you are using Netscape, turn off the HTML encoding for posts. It makes it very difficult to read if you are not using Netscape. It also waists a lot of space. (ie Bandwidth) turn off any 'smart quote' features your word processor or text editor may have. These options turn quotes, apostrophies, and dashes into 'prettier' ones; while it may look great on your computer, people with different programs will not be able to see them. Don't post a binary. Binary is ok for pictures in a pictures group. It is not ok for posting a fanfic. Odds are someone who wants to read your story doesn't have the same word processor as you and won't be able to read it. When you are dealing with something you want someone to read, the easier it is to read, the more likely they will read it. Binaries need to be decoded before they are read, which can be a hassle on some news readers. When you are using a newsreader and you post your story as an attachment (in other words, you can't see it in the message window), you are posting it as a binary. 2.0 FONTS Earlier, I mentioned that each line in a post should only be between 70 and 75 characters in length. How do you do that in a word processor? Word processors have two types of fonts: Fixed-width and porportional-spaced. The fixed-width font is a carryover from the early days of computers, when they were little more than glorified typewriters. However, for posting a news article, they are exactly what you want to use. Compared to the current porportional-spaced fonts, they are ugly to look at but, they have a feature that is essential to usenet: Every character is the SAME width. That means an "i" will take up the same amount of space horizontally as an "m". When counting characters, this is very importaint. The other type of font is porportional. These are very pretty fonts, the ones you would generally use if you were writing a letter to your friend. However, an "i" takes up much less space than an "m", which throws off your character count on a line. Example of porportional font: Times New Roman Example of fixed font: Courier 3.0 How to compose the fanfic using 3.1 vi Vi is an excellent editor if you know how to use it. You don't have to worry about it throwing in non-ascii characters. What you type in vi is exactly what you get--no more, no less. It is a very basic editor. However, vi normally does not wrap words for you. You must tell it to wrap words, otherwise it will quite happily put everything on one large line for you. TERMINAL If you are using a terminal, the size of your screen will be 80 characters (unless you have a strange configuration). To tell vi to wrap at 70 characters, enter the following command: :set wm=10 The wrap margin is the number of characters from the right at which you would like to wrap. In this case, 80-70 = 10. X-WINDOWS Vi can also be run inside an X window. The width of an X-Term can be any size that will fit on your screen. 1. First, find out the size of your X Window. a. If you have xwininfo, this should tell you the size. b. If you are running a system with out xwininfo, then try resizing the window. Often, the window manager will display the size of the window as you resize it. The first number (x) is the one you are interested in. 2. Perform the following calculation: size of window - 70 = num 3. issue the following command in vi: :set wm=num <- where num is the number you discovered in step 2. 3.2 pico Pico is the editor used in the PINE mail program from Washington State University. If you are using Pine for mail, chances are Pico is somewhere on your system. Pico will automatically word-wrap new text at 10 characters from the right side of the display. This is great for a terminal. If you are using a plain terminal, just fire up pico and have fun. Like vi, it won't throw in non-ascii characters on you. Unlike vi, it is friendlier to the beginner. X-WINDOWS Unfortunately, if you are using X-WINDOWS and pico inside a window, you will have to resize your window to 80 characters before starting pico. I know PINE forces pico to wrap at 70 characters no matter the size of the window in which is run it, but I don't know how PINE does that, so until someone finds out, you are stuck resizing your window to 80 characters before starting pico. 3.3 MS WORD (Windows & MAC) Compose your story just as you would anything else in Word. Once you are done, do the following: 1. Set your left and right margins to the Word default of 1.25" if you changed them. 2. Go to the Edit menu and choose "Select All". 3. Change the font to Courier size 10 or 12. (I prefer 12 for the shorter line length.) 4. Go to the File menu and choose "Save As". Give the file a name with a .txt ending In the File Type area, choose MS DOS TEXT with LINE BREAKS. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This line is very important, for it does several things: It removes all smart quotes from the file, it restricts the contents of the file to standard ASCII characters, and it inserts a return at the end of every line. If you are using a MAC choose Plain Text with Line Breaks. However, in this case you must make sure the smart quotes setting is off before you attempt to save. The text file you have just created will be the file you will post. NOTE: I have recently received instructions for turning off smart quotes in word from Diana Calder. Well, as far as the "smart quotes" part goes, the solution depends somewhat on which version of Word you have, since Microsoft likes moving menu options from one version to the next. However, it should go something like this: Go to the "Tools" menu. Click on "AutoCorrect". In the window that pops up, select the "AutoFormat As You Type" tab. Under "Replace as you type", uncheck "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" (actually, unchecking everything in this list is probably a good idea since they're virtually all special characters of one sort or another). This works verbatim in Word97, but should be very similar in other versions. 4.0 How to post a fanfic using 4.1 trn/rn Trn is threaded read news, and it is the newsreader I use the most. It is available on virtually all unix machines, but in case it isn't, the other reader with the same command structure is rn. Long ago, I forgot the proper posting command for trn. (I will have to look it up one of these days) I instead grab an article and use the follow-up command. (f) 1. f 2. Do you wish to start a new subject [ynq] y 3. This will post to thousand of newsgroups, etc... [ynq] y 4. Subject: [FANFIC] Name of Story part x of y 5. Enter name of file: filename of fanfic 6. Send, Abort, Edit Here you have an opportunity to edit your fanfic or the headers of the article. 7. send your story to the group. The nice feature of using the follow-up command is that if you are posting a multi-part story and the previous part is still on your server, you can follow up to it and answer "no" in step 2. This will create a thread of your story. If someone comes into your story later, they can grab the most recent piece and use the threading commands of their newsreader (or DejaNews) to find the previous pieces with little effort. 4.2 Netscape Netscape can be a little difficult, since what it is doing isn't readily obvious. When you are ready to post the first part of your fanfic, choose "To News". You will encounter a dialogue box similar to the Mail dialogue box. In the Subject line, enter something similar to [FANFIC] Name of Story part x of y Adding the story: IMPORTANT: Do not go to "Attach" and attach your story file. This causes Netscape to treat your story as a binary file even if it isn't. Netscape will encode the file before sending it out. Instead, open your file in another window and copy and paste your story into the message area. I know it is a pain, but that is the best way to do it. Netscape automatically wraps new lines at 70 characters. If you have already wrapped your lines at 75 characters, you will find that the last word of every line will appear on the next line and it won't look very good. The next time you post, wrap your lines at a lower character count and things will turn out better. If you are posting a part of your story after part 1 and the previous part is still on the news server, you should try using the "RE: News" button instead. While you have the annoyance of deleting your previous story before pasting in the new part, it has the added benefit of threading your story, making it easier for a new reader to find the other parts. ********************************************************************* Thanks To Diana Calder and Robert Jung for their comments Thanks to Doug Dlin for editing the first version of this FAQLET -- -Vulcana *********pawright@eyrie.org********* or ****pawright@tfb.l8r.net******** * Mistress of Tranfic Base ** Home Page * * http://tfb.l8r.net/transformers ** http://tfb.l8r.net/pawright * *Moderates rec.arts.comics.creative and rec.toys.transformers.moderated* ************************************************************************