18.499 computing and composition

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 499.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: Haradda_at_aol.com (13)
         Subject: Re: 18.485 computing and composition theory

   [2] From: "Heyward Ehrlich" <ehrlich_at_andromeda.rutgers.edu> (20)
         Subject: Re: 18.485 computing and composition theory

   [3] From: Martin Holmes <mholmes_at_uvic.ca> (135)
         Subject: Re: 18.485 computing and composition theory

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:44:01 +0000
         From: Haradda_at_aol.com
         Subject: Re: 18.485 computing and composition theory

In a message dated 1/19/2005 3:56:55 PM Mountain Standard Time,
willard.mccarty_at_KCL.AC.UK writes:
>(3) does anybody know about a program that'll strip out the
>useless code from a M$Word-created HTML file? (as a plain ascii
>file the text in question is about 17K; in its full flower, as
>published to HTML by Word, it's 48K). (By the way, I've tried
>M$Word's "filtered" HTML and Dreamweaver's HTML cleanup.
>Neither touch the mess.)
>

I use a little program called web2text that handles just about
everything. You do have to do a little clean up on the quotes and dashes
in most cases.

David Reed

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:44:27 +0000
         From: "Heyward Ehrlich" <ehrlich_at_andromeda.rutgers.edu>
         Subject: Re: 18.485 computing and composition theory

The best way is to instruct students to use Word and Word Perfect to start
out by saving all files in text mode -- no codes.

The graphical word processors like Word and Word Perfect
won the battle a decade ago. But plain text editors like
Notepad, Textpad, BBedit, Qedit, etc, still exist.

The only HTML codes that are really necessary for writing students to know
are line breaks <BR> and paragraph breaks <P>.
Perhaps text marked <pre> is showing as written and thus
won't wrap. If so, you can remove the <pre> codes and then globally change
double carriage returns to <p /> to make
paragraph breaks with normal line wrapping. You need a text
editor that understands carriage returns.

If your browser can display these Word files use "Save as" text to create
plain files. Or you can define the file on the screen (CTRL-A) and then
copy (CTRL-C) and paste (CTRL-V) to a another text file. Either way removes
the formatting.
Yes, I agree that the situation is maddening.

Heyward Ehrlich
ehrlich_at_andromeda.rutgers.edu
Dept of English, Rutgers University, Newark NJ

--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:45:02 +0000
         From: Martin Holmes <mholmes_at_uvic.ca>
         Subject: Re: 18.485 computing and composition theory

Hi there,

OpenOffice.org has an excellent word-processor in it which saves and loads
HTML, and its HTML is nice and clean (in fact, in the v2 beta you can get
now, it's XHTML). It can also read and write Word docs. And it's free.
There's no reason to use MS Office nowadays.

Cheers,
Martin

At 02:14 PM 19/01/2005, you wrote:

> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 485.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
> www.princeton.edu/humanist/
> Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
>
>
>
> Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 07:31:53 +0000
> From: Katharine Patterson <katpatte_at_interchange.ubc.ca>
> >
>
> >Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 08:25:51 -0400
> >From: Russ Hunt <hunt_at_stu.ca>
> > >To: Katharine Patterson <katpatte_at_interchange.ubc.ca>
> >
> >Katharine --
> >
> >This better? Feel free to cut further.
> >
> >-- Russ
> >
> >A Plague on Both Your Houses
> >
> >I don't know how many folks there are out there who will have
> >confronted this, either as writers or teachers, but it has
> >become increasingly apparent to me that we're dealing with an
> >industry that wants us to go back to about the fifties in terms
> >of composition theory. Word processors and HTML text editors are
> >increasingly, and inexorably, becoming text display manipulators
> >rather than text processors. Editing something produced in any
> >of the current version is more difficult by a factor of about
> >five than it was five years ago.
> >
> >I've got students creating assignments (lesson plans,
> >essentially) for an eighteenth century literature course,
> >posting them on a Web site so that the rest of the class can
> >read them ahead of the meeting. One of them just posted a page
> >which includes text that doesn't wrap. Text is displayed out two
> >or three hundred characters to the right of the screen.
> >
> >She achieved this, she says, by composing the page in M$Word,
> >and then saving it "as a Web page" -- M$Speak for HTML. This
> >happened at the end of class Monday night, and I casually said,
> >oh, don't bother; I'll copy the file and fix it for you.
> >
> >I spent over an hour yesterday trying to fix it without copying
> >the entire text to a new file and reformatting everything
> >manually in some different editor -- and failed. I can't find
> >the code that means the text wraps in M$Word but not in a
> >browser. I wound up converting the text to plain ASCII and re-
> >introducing the formatting with Netscape Composer.
> >
> >The problem is that the sheer amount of useless code that M$Word
> >pours over the text makes it impossible to edit manually, and
> >also -- and this is my main concern -- really makes it damn near
> >impossible to edit within M$Word itself. Every change you make
> >has amazing, unexpected consequences: there's a bulleted list in
> >the file, for example, and any attempt to modify it simply
> >screws up the formatting entirely.
> >
> >I can't find an editor that doesn't make it damn near impossible
> >for someone who doesn't already know what she's doing -- and can
> >avoid formatting tricks and all the other bells and whistles
> >that the damn programs shove in her face -- to go back and
> >revisit a text in any way other than spell checking. Both Word
> >and WordPerfect, which seem to be the two default word
> >processors around these days, and all the HTML editors available
> >as well (though to a lesser extent), have been migrated to, or
> >have evolved to be, text _display_ editors. It's _all_ about how
> >the text looks. And from my perspective as someone trying to
> >help students learn to write, that makes them all next to
> >useless.
> >
> >When what a student wants to produce is not a snappy graphic
> >display, but a text which can then be revised, she's out of
> >luck. I can't find an editor that doesn't make it damn near
> >impossible for someone who doesn't already know what she's doing
> >-- and can avoid formatting tricks and all the other bells and
> >whistles that the damn programs shove in her face -- to go back
> >and revisit a text in any way other than spell checking.
> >
> >Composition theory and pedagogy spend half my career getting
> >past surface error fixing as the default mode for editing . . .
> >and Bill Gates & Co. wipe out all that progress in five years of
> >"improving" their word processors.
> >
> >So I guess I have three questions:
> >
> >(1) has anybody else encountered this, or is this just a
> >function of the fact that I'm a fossil and still want text
> >markup to be comprehensible?
> >
> >(2) does anyone know about publications or resources on the
> >migration of word processors toward text display and away from,
> >well, word processing?
> >
> >(3) does anybody know about a program that'll strip out the
> >useless code from a M$Word-created HTML file? (as a plain ascii
> >file the text in question is about 17K; in its full flower, as
> >published to HTML by Word, it's 48K). (By the way, I've tried
> >M$Word's "filtered" HTML and Dreamweaver's HTML cleanup.
> >Neither touch the mess.)
> >
> ></rant>
> >
> >-- Russ Hunt
> >St. Thomas University
> >http://www.StThomasU.ca/~hunt/
> >
> >
>
>
>[NB: If you do not receive a reply within 24 hours please resend]
>Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
>Humanities | King's College London | Kay House, 7 Arundel Street | London
>WC2R 3DX | U.K. | +44 (0)20 7848-2784 fax: -2980 ||
>willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/

______________________________________
Martin Holmes
University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre
mholmes_at_uvic.ca
martin_at_mholmes.com
mholmes_at_halfbakedsoftware.com
http://www.mholmes.com
http://web.uvic.ca/hcmc/
http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com
Received on Thu Jan 20 2005 - 03:14:32 EST