Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
Richmond Mathewson wrote: Just to reiterate that I think it would extremely useful if RR were to be capable of identifying both: 1. British indented paragraphs; this presupposes that the TAB key would work inside textFields. 2. North American paragraphs [i.e. those signalled by a missing line]. I'm not sure what "identifying" means in this case, nor what identifies one method as British and the other as American. All the American books I've seen have indented paragraphs with no space between. At any rate, you can use tabs in text fields to indent the first line. You only need to set the tabstops of the field first. But even easier, set the "firstIndent" property of the field. Then you don't need tabs at all, and in fact, you can even produce outdented paragraphs this way. -- Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
On 20 Dec 2008, at 11:08, Richmond Mathewson ranted about some professors: Yet Richmond, despite your contempt for one professor who taught you about paragraphs, you repeat what he taught you as fact. What do you think that tells us? A quick look at various pieces of writing will show that both indented and block paragraphs are used in both countries in much the same way. I guess if Jacque were like yourself, she might conclude the traditional Scottish way to say thanks for some help is to offer a rant about the inadequacies of educational establishments. Cheers Dave (Sent after counting to 10) ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
In my view, the problem with paragraphs is, that it's a style, not a chunk. Therefore everyone can easily claim to do it right, and that others do it wrongly. As for paragraph support within Rev: As Paragraphs are styled and not chunks, they should be supported within Fields. And they are indeed, using the "FirstIntent" property, every line turns into it's own paragraph, as it is usual in text editors. To get the sub-lines of these paragraphs, one can use the "formattedText". Of course there's also a paragraph break char in Unicode, but I haven't tested it's effect on Rev fields. Have Fun Björnke -- official ChatRev page: http://bjoernke.com/runrev/chatrev.php Chat with other RunRev developers: go stack URL "http://bjoernke.com/stacks/chatrev/chatrev1.3b3.rev"; ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
Also, you can get the htmlText and count to get the number of paragraphs in a field. As for formatting you can insert a after each tag to insert an indent. Just a thought. Tom McGrath III Lazy River Software 3mcgr...@comcast.net iTunes Library Suite - libITS Information and download can be found on this page: http://www.lazyriversoftware.com/RevOne.html On Dec 20, 2008, at 10:17 AM, Björnke von Gierke wrote: In my view, the problem with paragraphs is, that it's a style, not a chunk. Therefore everyone can easily claim to do it right, and that others do it wrongly. As for paragraph support within Rev: As Paragraphs are styled and not chunks, they should be supported within Fields. And they are indeed, using the "FirstIntent" property, every line turns into it's own paragraph, as it is usual in text editors. To get the sub-lines of these paragraphs, one can use the "formattedText". Of course there's also a paragraph break char in Unicode, but I haven't tested it's effect on Rev fields. Have Fun Björnke -- official ChatRev page: http://bjoernke.com/runrev/chatrev.php Chat with other RunRev developers: go stack URL "http://bjoernke.com/stacks/chatrev/chatrev1.3b3.rev"; ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
Thomas McGrath III wrote: As for formatting you can insert a after each tag to insert an indent. See also the firstIndent field property in the Rev dictionary: Use the firstIndent property to created indented paragraphs. Value: The firstIndent of a field is an integer. By default, the firstIndent property of newly created fields is set to zero. Comments: The first line of each paragraph is left-indented the specified number of pixels. If the firstIndent is zero, the field's paragraphs are not indented. If the firstIndent is negative, the first line of each paragraph is outdented the specified number of pixels, creating a hanging indent. (It may be necessary to increase the field's leftMargin property to accommodate the hanging indent.) -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Revolution training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
Richmond Mathewson wrote: What I did point out was that in Southern Illinois (even if nowhere else) there was a rather narrow definition of what constitutes good English. Easily resolved by looking at some American-printed books on Amazon, for example. I'm surprised this professor was so uninformed. Are we to detect paragraph breaks merely on the basis of TabKeyDowns or something else. Certainly TABS will only detect the indented type of paragraph. In Revolution, paragraphs are equivalent to "lines". Just get the number of lines in a field and you will have the number of paragraphs. In the case where there are empty lines between paragraphs, you can filter the content "without empty" and then get the number of lines of the filtered content, if that's what you need. In rare cases, such as when importing certain text documents, there may be a return character at the end of every visible line; these are "hard wrapped" lines that don't represent true paragraphs. If the text has empty lines between actual, visual paragraphs, you can do some fairly simple replacements to remove the hard line endings. If the text does not have empty lines between visual paragraphs, it's a bigger challenge. I've written a best-guess algorithm to deal with that situation for one of my stacks. It isn't perfect. -- Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
Richmond Mathewson wrote: JLG wrote: "I'm not sure what "identifying" means in this case, nor what identifies one method as British and the other as American. All the American books I've seen have indented paragraphs with no space between." --- RANT WARNING --- That's odd; when I was at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale I was told by several professors (I use the small 'p' deliberately) that Indented paragraphs were 'British' and unacceptable. I was also asked by one "professor" (of Old English, no less) why I couldn't spell English correctly! I remember on that day I hopped in the car and went out and sat...[snip). - RANT ENDING - This one just pushed my buttons Having been involved in "American" book publishing, editing and magazine printing since 1972... = 36 years (wherein our editor's always, with glee, change "colour" to "color") I can't help but cringe and weigh in here: your Profs at USI Carbondale were lost in Ivory Tower Arrogant Intellectual Polemic Madness, a disease that runs rampant, unfortunately...to set up such a contrived polarity. Not that I'm against educators in higher education, but over the years one just gets sick of these kinds of assertions as they so often pollute discourse that should otherwise be grounded in empirical observation and objectivity, by the very ones whose careers are supposed to be based on their empicism and objectivity. Instead we just get minds filled with books that were regurgitated content of other books, that were regurgitated contents of other books, that were regurgitated content of other books... (don't get me going...) Whether you use indented paragraphs, block (flush left, one blank line) paragraphs or "run in- in-line" paragraphs broken with just an old para sign... is a typographic design decision and has nothing to do with national literary conventions. "Indented paragraphs were 'British' and unacceptable." is such a classic statement of the ignorance of many academics about the real world. Just look at the "American" books and zines in any Barnes and Noble store for verification. It would be just "wrong" for RR to set up any kind of conventions based on such vacuous criteria. Sivakatirswami ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
You know, this whole business about indenting versus blank lines, arrogant higher ed educators and the like takes me back a few years when I was finishing my second master's degree and was positively hounded over similar issues. Over the various years and degree programs, I've had to "learn" the following approved "styles" (formatting techniques): Turabian Chicago MLA AP APA Whatever the style was for scientific/technical writing Whatever the style was for legal writing Harvard And -- you know what? I can't really keep any of them straight. For the life of me it just isn't clear why higher ed places such emphasis on where to put commas, dates, and other things over what really ought to be more important, namely, CONTENT. Maybe we can start a new thread on how formatting styles are like various religions? Judy http://revined.blogspot.com On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Sivakatirswami wrote: > Richmond Mathewson wrote: > >> JLG wrote: >> >> "I'm not sure what "identifying" means in this case, nor what identifies >> one method as British and the other as American. All the American books I've >> seen have indented paragraphs with no space between." >> >> --- >> RANT WARNING >> --- >> >> That's odd; when I was at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale >> I was told by several professors (I use the small 'p' deliberately) that >> Indented paragraphs were 'British' and unacceptable. I was also asked by >> one "professor" (of Old English, no less) why I couldn't spell English >> correctly! I remember on that day I hopped in the car and went out and >> sat...[snip). >> >> - >> RANT ENDING >> - >> >> >> > > This one just pushed my buttons > > Having been involved in "American" book publishing, editing and magazine > printing since 1972... = 36 years (wherein our editor's always, with glee, > change "colour" to "color") I can't help but cringe and weigh in here: your > Profs at USI Carbondale were lost in Ivory Tower Arrogant Intellectual > Polemic Madness, a disease that runs rampant, unfortunately...to set up such > a contrived polarity. > > Not that I'm against educators in higher education, but over the years one > just gets sick of these kinds of assertions as they so often pollute > discourse that should otherwise be grounded in empirical observation and > objectivity, by the very ones whose careers are supposed to be based on > their empicism and objectivity. Instead we just get minds filled with books > that were regurgitated content of other books, that were regurgitated > contents of other books, that were regurgitated content of other books... > (don't get me going...) > > Whether you use indented paragraphs, block (flush left, one blank line) > paragraphs or "run in- in-line" paragraphs broken with just an old para > sign... is a typographic design decision and has nothing to do with national > literary conventions. "Indented paragraphs were 'British' and unacceptable." > is such a classic statement of the ignorance of many academics about the > real world. Just look at the "American" books and zines in any Barnes and > Noble store for verification. > > It would be just "wrong" for RR to set up any kind of conventions based on > such vacuous criteria. > > Sivakatirswami > > > ___ > use-revolution mailing list > use-revolution@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your > subscription preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution > ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
Richmond Mathewson wrote: Back to my "Applescript in a Nutshell" (which is an endlessly tedious book): page 430: "A paragraph object is a chunk of text that is terminated by a new line or paragraph character." Can anybody tell me what a 'paragraph character" would be? In Rev, as I mentioned, it's a carriage return. Ditto for all word processing apps. -- Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
J. Landman Gay wrote: Richmond Mathewson wrote: Back to my "Applescript in a Nutshell" (which is an endlessly tedious book): page 430: "A paragraph object is a chunk of text that is terminated by a new line or paragraph character." Can anybody tell me what a 'paragraph character" would be? In Rev, as I mentioned, it's a carriage return. Ditto for all word processing apps. This is Option-7 on the Mac -- it is a character that indicates a paragraph break without any new line. The typographical convention is that this character is preceeded by a space, but is not followed by one. thus prepending it to the new paragraph as a starting character Substitute option-7 for dollar sign in the 4 paragraphs below. -- (way OT) The moles were working late into the night. Their top engineers were blindly building mountains of compost, heaps of much-maligned form over function. $Young apprentice mole-engineers, who still had eyes, did careful analyses and reported that this compost had no nutritive value for the seeds and saplings planted by the mole-creatives in the next cavern (for which garden the compost was intended) were told to shut up, had their eyes removed and were banished for 72 hours to solitary confinement. $Over time the young engineers learned to help shovel that stuff without a murmur of protest, until one day, they too became stern task masters and proud supervisers in the realm of the mountains of form over function. $Meanwhile a wise old mole who had been observing silently all the while, climbed up a ladder he had built for himself decades ago, to do what moles never do--sun himself topside on the lawn. As he chewed a blade of grass and rolled over on his belly to tan his buns, he thought, "Ahh, if they just would try out my ladder, to come up here and relax, they would all understand the correct unity of form and function." -- skts ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Hammering on about Paragraphs
Richmond Mathewson wrote: Dear Sivakatirswami, [snip] I would like to delude myself that, although a mole, shovelling away in the dark, I have at least one eye open to look at higher things. Where you and I differ, perhaps, is that, at present, "higher things" means becoming a highly competent Runtime Revolution programmer. While this may not result in a particularly long-lasting type of peace, it will guarantee that the rest of my time on earth is rather comfortable. None of the moles in the dream were meant to represent "Jolly Richmond." :-) And, the allegory was never meant to fly to such dizzing teleological heights. I only hoped to thwart any effort made toward establishing some "British Paragraph" (indented) vs "American Paragraph" (block style) in Revolution syntax, by our dear RunRev engineers As has been pointed out, it would appear, on the surface a least, it a simple matter to test for firstIndent property, or "cr & space" or "cr & cr" etc. If anything is every to be achieved toward that end it needs to be, as as oft been begged for, full paragraph level styling, ala any old word processing program or ala CSS if the latter be more doable. Either way would work for me, though the latter seems more appealing -- unless we want portability across processing environments. Back on Topic: hmmm me thinks I never did get clarity on precisely what your need/problem/challenge is here. What are you trying to solve? Given the never-to-be-overcome idiosyncracies of data entry, you will *still* have to parse and clean up "cr & space&space " invariably entered by those who think this is the standard. e.g. you have fields set up with no first indent and your users will balk and enter spaces in the first line whether you like it or not. In my own apps for volunteers doing audio transcriptions, I have, on save, stuff like this, sweet old, non-optimized baby xTalk: # restore block paragraphs separated by one blank line replace (cr & " ") with cr in fld "Entry" replace (cr & " ") with cr in fld "Entry" replace (cr & " ") with cr in fld "Entry" replace (cr & "") with cr in fld "Entry" replace cr with (cr &cr) in fld "Entry" repeat 4 times replace (cr &cr &cr) with (cr & cr) in fld "Entry" repeat time just prior to replace (cr & cr) with "& cr & " just prior to converting the field to XML for later XSLT transformations... Not too elegant, but soo very obvious -- which is what I so love about xTalk. You could then easily follow up with # set to indented style replace (cr & cr) with cr in fld "entry" set the firstIndent of fld "Entry" to true skts ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
