File Format Hell

I’ve had a long journey with text file formats.

First there was… uh… whatever MS works saves files as. That was back in the Windows 3.1 era. That sucked. Then we went to Word… MS Word, and MS Word would not open MS Works files. Go figure. So there was the lovely time of opening files, ripping text from 50 pages of bad binary translation and putting them in Word.

Ok, so after Word I found Wordperfect. No, not that crappy blue screen one either, I found the joy, the wonder, the amazement of Wordperfect 8. To this day, it brings a tear to my eyes. Wordperfect opens Word, great! Absolutely nothing opens Wordperfect except, Wordperfect. Not so great.

Then later I got a copy of Lotus Smart Suite. LWP files baby. Used that for a while, mainly because of Approach. Office 2000 came out, tried that (yet again MS changes Word file formats. Meanwhile WPD files can be opened by any version of Wordperfect after 6…)

Then on to WordPerfect 9. oh, how I miss thee.

There was even some StarOffice in there, and OO.o version, uh… something. (did they do an 0.9 release? Maybe it was just 1.0.. )

Ok, then I go to a Mac.

So after much crying and pouting and general sleepless nights I get MS Office. Thank the Gods that MS Office for the Mac opens MS Office for Windows files. (Yes I was worried, don’t you remember Word 6 -> Word 95 issues? But they are the same… NO THEY ARE NOT!)

But.

Yup, what the hell do I do with SWF, LWP, WPD, WKS (i think) various Quattro Pro and 1-2-3 files (we don’t even think about databases, we learned that lesson from Access 2000)??

Well, again, there was crying and screaming.

Out comes NeoOffice (OpenOffice.org for the Mac). With it comes along ODT. Sounds great, sounds wonderful, sounds like another file format… And I realized that for 99% of my stuff i don’t need all that crap. (it is really just crap) What I need has been in front of me the whole time.

RTF

So that is my new fixation, moving everything to RTF.

Now now, you wait, Mr ODT, I ain’t saying nothing bad about you. In a way you are the next hope, possibly the next RTF. As an open standard there is hope that ODT will find itself on any platform out there. That would rock. Then you could get all the crap in there too. (and spreadsheets would be nice, I like spreadsheets.)

But for now, RTF (and even maybe TXT as back-ups) will do just fine. The goal is the future. A future where I don’t have to find a PC to install Lotus on to get a file that I swore I had backed up somewhere else in WPD format which Neo opens now, but I didn’t so NOW I gotta find a find one.

And do you know how hard it is to find a PC in a Mac house? Sheesh.

Life After the Word Processor, part two

Ok, so in that previous post I talked how I was dealing with storing information. Because let’s face it, even if I wasn’t a writer, there is a lot of it out there. And usually isn’t very well organized.

But what of these programs for writers? You’ve seen them in the stores: WRITE YOUR NOVEL NOW! and has some author you’ve never heard of saying that they’d not have been able to do anything without Program X.

Now why would I need program X, I’d always say, when I have a word processor? What could it do beyond, you know, typing?

Then I got an email from Mariner Software about Storymill, which is their program X. Since I have and like Mac Journal (using it now to write this entry!), I went and took a look. Now my thoughts were, what can this thing do that Mac Journal or NeoOffice can’t?

The short version is nothing. My word processor and some folders can do anything Storymill can do. My word processor and Mac Journal can do anything Storymill can do. Hell, text edit and some proper file names can do all of this. So why did I find myself drawn again and again to Storymill?

Presentation and packaging which has to be the software equivalent of “Location, Location, Location.”

Storymill provides a single user interface for writing of scenes, which are then grouped into chapters, of character bios, place descriptions, even outside research. All of these can be tagged, marked and labeled with ‘1st draft“, ”final draft“ etc.

This organization allows you to have all your information right there in front of you. ”Now what color was that dudes hair?“ We’ve been there before. You just click on the characters tab and find him and there he is. Scenes can be marked with who is in them, so you can at a glance see which characters are in which scene.

The scenes are then put into chapters. From there you can read through in the chapter the scenes. This makes moving scenes around easier. Decide you want to talk more about the good guys in the coffee shop before you show the bad guy again? just drag the scene order to how you want it.

There is a timeline feature which lets you tag scenes with a specific date and time. Then you can seem then laid out on the time line arranged by character storyline. This will help keep you from having a character in two places at once.

It even has a ‘progress’ meter. Say you have a daily goal of 1000 words, or writing for 20 minutes? You put that in, and the meter up top will let you know when you get to your goal.

My only wish is that it worked better with Mac Journal. I already start small ideas, even have written a short story or two in MJ. It would be nice if i could link say a research entry in Storymill with a journal entry in Mac Journal so it was updated from either program.

Is this better than NeoOffice? in the end it is all about how you work, how you use these things. In the end, the words on the screen are the important part, now how many bells your software has (well, unless you are writing software, but that is another post I suppose).

I can see myself using StoryMill to write and organize, but at the same time it falls into the previous entry’s issue with too many programs taking notes. In the end I still need to be properly organized with my information so that it can be found. (hence wishing it linked up with MJ)

Letter to a writer

Constance,

There is something I have been thinking about, and wanted to share with you. In class we talked about your piece, “Good hair, bad hair – thank you Toni Morrison!”. Its not so much the piece that I have thought much about, although it was very well written, and has entered my thoughts at times. Instead, it was a phrase you used when you were talking about it: “Intended Audience.”

I work at a bookstore, and I get questions that you wouldn’t even be able to make up. There was one day, a woman came up to me and asked where we kept the black authors. I didn’t understand the question, so I asked was there a book in particular she was looking for. She replied she was looking for Jerome Dickey. So I took her to fiction, to the D’s. Thanking me, she then re-asked her original question, do you have a section of black authors? Still a little confused, I replied that we had an African – American cultural studies section, but that authors were only separated by the content of the book.

My naivety aside, the question still sits in my head. If (“when” , say “when”) I get published, I don’t think I would like to be separated out but my colour, origin, shoe size, whatever.Shouldn’t my work be above such things? Words are not linked to skin colour, why should sentences, or paragraphs be?

Which goes back to another thing we talked about in class, “What does it mean to be a Black Writer”, and I was asked if I thought of myself as a white writer. The answer I gave was awkward, and long. But this too I have thought about.

When someone creates art, there is a part of them in that work. Sometimes it can be obvious, like a Dali, or Hemingway. Other times you have too look deeper, but it is there. So, if there is a part of me in everything I make, all of my art, from poetry to web graphics, what part of me am I showing?

But a discussion of race and writing is not where I am headed. This is not to be a letter from a white boy to a black girl, but a letter from a writer to a writer. Nothing more.

These two points, the lady in the bookstore, and the discussion of being a black writer lead directly back to that phrase you used. “Intended Audience.”

What part of me, that is in my work, would exclude someone from that group? Is there something about me that inherently creates an “intended audience”?

To me, intended audience says if I am not in that group, this piece will not mean anything to me. When I read your essay, I didn’t feel to be outside of some secret group. Quite the contrary, I felt as if I were being brought into a group, learning something about someone else I would have otherwise never known.

“Intended Audience” didn’t apply to the words in that essay. But it came up in discussion.

Take this piece, for example. It can be argued that you are the only one who this letter is intended for; that you are the “intended audience.” Does that mean that no one else could read it and gain something from it?

I guess what I am saying, is don’t sell yourself short with phrases like “intended audience”, and don’t hide a damn good essay behind them either. Your words speak for themselves, don’t limit them. Don’t limit yourself, plenty others will do it for you, putting qualifiers on you; black writer, woman writer, young writer, American writer, DC writer, blah blah blah. Let them worry about that. You worry about art, your art, because that is what an artist does. Adjectives are just semantics.

And phrases like “intended audience” sound too much like justification. Something the nothing I have read of yours needs.

-jacob