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jazzfishAwhile ago I was having some problems with Scrivener's RTF output. It would occasionally eat paragraph spacing info, I would fix it in OpenOffice (a free MS-Word clone), and then the next time I opened the file it would be even more broken. I thought those problems had been solved.
(This is what us writer types call foreshadowing.)
For reasons that are still unclear to me but which I'll attack this weekend or early next week, it's turning the last paragraph of the story into single-spaced. No problem, says I, I can fix that in OpenOffice. So I do, and open it again to make sure it hasn't broken anything (looks good), and submit to a market noted for its super-quick turnaround times.
Got a response back last night saying essentially "No, and by the way please use standard manuscript format."
Huh?
Opened it this morning in OpenOffice, and saw pages and pages of whitespace and broken headers.
So *that* was embarrassing.
I think (think) I have fixed the problem by switching to LibreOffice (a slightly different free MS-Word clone). I've heard before that this is something I should have done years ago but I have a great deal of software inertia.
On the bright side, the switch seems to have been painless, and LibreOffice is a touch faster than OpenOffice, too.
Stupid software. I'd go back to just using MS Word but a) while unemployed is not the time to start spending hundreds of dollars on software, b) versions of Word after 2003 have been increasingly less usable, and c) they've moved to a 'subscription' model where I get to pay them every month. As I don't anticipate using the software every month this seems like a terrible deal.
(This is what us writer types call foreshadowing.)
For reasons that are still unclear to me but which I'll attack this weekend or early next week, it's turning the last paragraph of the story into single-spaced. No problem, says I, I can fix that in OpenOffice. So I do, and open it again to make sure it hasn't broken anything (looks good), and submit to a market noted for its super-quick turnaround times.
Got a response back last night saying essentially "No, and by the way please use standard manuscript format."
Huh?
Opened it this morning in OpenOffice, and saw pages and pages of whitespace and broken headers.
So *that* was embarrassing.
I think (think) I have fixed the problem by switching to LibreOffice (a slightly different free MS-Word clone). I've heard before that this is something I should have done years ago but I have a great deal of software inertia.
On the bright side, the switch seems to have been painless, and LibreOffice is a touch faster than OpenOffice, too.
Stupid software. I'd go back to just using MS Word but a) while unemployed is not the time to start spending hundreds of dollars on software, b) versions of Word after 2003 have been increasingly less usable, and c) they've moved to a 'subscription' model where I get to pay them every month. As I don't anticipate using the software every month this seems like a terrible deal.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-21 08:53 pm (UTC)I have a subscription to Microsoft Office 365 and am pleased because we can use it on many computers and devices and I can allocate a certain amount of cloud space to the kids. It works for us because we all have desktops, laptops, iPads, or something and can access it from anywhere there is wifi.
I have been lamenting, though, that I can't take my nice little Asus Transformer to Rainforest because there's no internet and I can't access Office 365 without it. So, I have to lug my HUGE and HEAVY laptop, whom I love dearly, but is a pain to carry on trips. (The laptop has a different version of Word physically installed.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-23 01:18 am (UTC)There *is* internet, though! It's not the fastest internet in the world (at least it wasn't three years ago, though I heard a rumour that they've upgraded it at least somewhat since then) but it is definitely present. No cell signal to speak of, though.