Editing/saving before publishing???

[Tisha]

Hi everyone, is there a way to write and save your work on here before actually publishing?

I've been writing in an external editor then copying and pasting and the formatting seems to always get screwed up.

Any advice here would be appreciated.

 

thx,

Tisha

[~Brian~]

@Tisha

Hi, Tisha:

I have a blog on my website:  I use WordPress to do all my blogging and editing, and while i am working, I can start writing and then save the work, but it sounds like you are trying to write a story?  To post anything in websites that has to be done in a forum, the easiest way to do that would be the FASS Editor.  I used to use this when I was in Malware Removal Training Classes, and we had to do "canned speeches" that we would have to copy and paste to the forums and then post them.  If I wanted to add colors and other elements, the FASS editor works great, because I believe that you can work on it, save it and as long as you have the thing open and on screen, you can then copy and paste it with whatever you need already there.

The problem is that if you have different forums, they may deal with code differently.  I use it on forums where I have to do informational postings, or ones where I want to add color or formatting changes. 

You can get it here:  is Called Fass: Free-Form Post Editor:  Fass Free Fourm Post Editor

Featurres:

Features

• Post editor replicates the post editing environment in forums
• Post generator automates the process of making specially formatted posts
• Post preview shows your post as it will appear on forums
• Configurable menus, skin colours and branding options for webmasters
• Designed for use with Invision Power Board, compatible with most forum software

I hope that I have been a help to you here:  Fass has been an awesome tool when I needed to prepare postings before actually posting them.

Welcome to DD - If I can be of any further assistance, please don't hesitate to ask

Brian

[WBDaddy]

1 hour ago, ~Brian~ said:

@Tisha

Hi, Tisha:

Her problem is that copying from her editing software (be it MS Word, OpenOffice Write, or Google Docs or something else) into a forum post blows the formatting up.  That's all. 

@Tisha, I don't have an answer to your conundrum.  It's a pain in the neck copying from word processing software into forum posts both here and elsewhere.  I know, for example, that ABDL Story Forum has an option for "paste as plain text" - which ignores any formatting marks and just WYSIWYG's whatever you slap in there.  I don't know that this forum has such a feature, or if it does, I don't know how to activate it.  

What this forum does have, if you look in your reply window (on the far right of the toolbar), is a tiny little piece of paper with a magnifying glass on it, which is the "preview" panel - lets you see what it's going to look like when you post it, so you can fix whatever formatting problems are there before you post. 

It's not a fix, but it's at least a workaround.  Hope it helps. 

[Tisha]

18 minutes ago, WBDaddy said:

Her problem is that copying from her editing software (be it MS Word, OpenOffice Write, or Google Docs or something else) into a forum post blows the formatting up.  That's all. 

@Tisha, I don't have an answer to your conundrum.  It's a pain in the neck copying from word processing software into forum posts both here and elsewhere.  I know, for example, that ABDL Story Forum has an option for "paste as plain text" - which ignores any formatting marks and just WYSIWYG's whatever you slap in there.  I don't know that this forum has such a feature, or if it does, I don't know how to activate it.  

What this forum does have, if you look in your reply window (on the far right of the toolbar), is a tiny little piece of paper with a magnifying glass on it, which is the "preview" panel - lets you see what it's going to look like when you post it, so you can fix whatever formatting problems are there before you post. 

It's not a fix, but it's at least a workaround.  Hope it helps. 

Thanks, I didn't notice that preview button before.

It would be nice to be able to compose here and click Save without publishing.  I think the best way I found was to type in notepad, paste in here, then format.  Kind of a pain but better than nothing.  I just don't like having this content in multiple places.

[WBDaddy]

16 minutes ago, Tisha said:

Thanks, I didn't notice that preview button before.

It would be nice to be able to compose here and click Save without publishing.  I think the best way I found was to type in notepad, paste in here, then format.  Kind of a pain but better than nothing.  I just don't like having this content in multiple places.

So use Google Docs with a throwaway Gmail address. 

[Alex Bridges]

I don’t have a good solution, but here’s what I noticed: if I copy from Word, my formatting gets saved; if I copy from Notes (iOS or Mac), it doesn’t. Both say they’re copied as rich text.

If I copy from Notes to Word, my formatting gets saved, so I suspect the issue is with the forum software.

[~Brian~]

56 minutes ago, WBDaddy said:

Her problem is that copying from her editing software (be it MS Word, OpenOffice Write, or Google Docs or something else) into a forum post blows the formatting up.  That's all. 

@Tisha, I don't have an answer to your conundrum.  It's a pain in the neck copying from word processing software into forum posts both here and elsewhere.  I know, for example, that ABDL Story Forum has an option for "paste as plain text" - which ignores any formatting marks and just WYSIWYG's whatever you slap in there.  I don't know that this forum has such a feature, or if it does, I don't know how to activate it.  

What this forum does have, if you look in your reply window (on the far right of the toolbar), is a tiny little piece of paper with a magnifying glass on it, which is the "preview" panel - lets you see what it's going to look like when you post it, so you can fix whatever formatting problems are there before you post. 

It's not a fix, but it's at least a workaround.  Hope it helps. 

@WBDaddy

The reason I responded with the FASS editor is that if you are making postings that are of short duration, have windows, and want to set up the formatting like it would be within invision power boards or other forums, this software can do that, and I have used it for a while - As forum software changes, things may be different, but your "preview button" thing that you pointed out is a cool workaround, that I didn't even know - THANK YOU!

ANY wordprocessing application or notepad type deal is gonna have formatting issues, so the best thing to do would be to try not to have a bunch of really fancy formatting if you are going to be copying and pasting.  My suggestion is to make sure you have distance between paragraphs, and past them one at a time:  Also, sometimes, strange things happen as your editing, so to have a copy of what you are working on saved will help you, so you can copy and paste piece by piece, until you have what you want. 

Take Care,

Brian

[ValentinesStuff]

I write unformatted in Notepad. Then dump it into a word processor to spell check. Then back to Notepad to save as a plain text file.

 

I really hate all the BS that word processors add into files and the "special" characters that turn into garbage if a different word processor is used.

[BoTox]

On 12/3/2020 at 11:07 AM, ValentinesStuff said:

I write unformatted in Notepad. Then dump it into a word processor to spell check. Then back to Notepad to save as a plain text file.

 

I really hate all the BS that word processors add into files and the "special" characters that turn into garbage if a different word processor is used.

That's sort of what I do. I create in Apache Open Office so I can edit it easily and then paste it into Notepad. It strips all the weird formatting marks that a word processor adds.

[WBDaddy]

3 hours ago, BoTox said:

That's sort of what I do. I create in Apache Open Office so I can edit it easily and then paste it into Notepad. It strips all the weird formatting marks that a word processor adds.

I'm a big OpenOffice person too, though lately I've been playing around with Scrivener for long-form stuff.  I like the organizational aspects. 

[MinnesotaWriter]

I write my stories in Microsoft Word and I've never run into any issues with a quick copy/paste into this forum.

Granted, I don't do much the way of formatting. I just paste it in, adjust the text-size for the chapter title and put it in bold, do another quick read through and it's always been good.

Otherwise, I'd suggest Google Drive/Docs as your best option, since that is free and auto-saves.

[BabySofia]

There's definitely a quirk pasting from Word or Google Docs directly. The best way around it is to save it as an .rtf text file and open it as said above with notepad/wordpad or another simple editor to paste over. It's an extra step, but Google Docs has an easy export function and I find myself using it the most. I agree with WBDaddy, the pasting isn't fun into either site. ABDLStoryForum got an upgrade a month or two ago that actually is playing nicer with pasting. I'm not nearly as frustrated when I've posted the last couple of times. Not as much traffic/comments over there though anymore.

[WBDaddy]

2 hours ago, MinnesotaWriter said:

Otherwise, I'd suggest Google Drive/Docs as your best option, since that is free and auto-saves.

The only real reason to use Google Docs is if you don't want to save on your local hard drive.  OpenOffice is free and has much more robust editing capabilities, not to mention it's a full office suite - including their versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Illustrator, Equation Editor, and Access.  All free. 

[Elbs]

On 12/2/2020 at 5:30 PM, WBDaddy said:

Her problem is that copying from her editing software (be it MS Word, OpenOffice Write, or Google Docs or something else) into a forum post blows the formatting up.  That's all. 

@Tisha, I don't have an answer to your conundrum.  It's a pain in the neck copying from word processing software into forum posts both here and elsewhere.  I know, for example, that ABDL Story Forum has an option for "paste as plain text" - which ignores any formatting marks and just WYSIWYG's whatever you slap in there.  I don't know that this forum has such a feature, or if it does, I don't know how to activate it.  

On a Windows computer, you can press Ctrl+Shift+V to paste without formatting.

[WBDaddy]

1 hour ago, Elbs said:

On a Windows computer, you can press Ctrl+Shift+V to paste without formatting.

I knew that was an option in MS Office.  Didn't realize it was available more broadly in the environment.