let's concentrate on helping users who need help
jim said:
I know how to hack browsers to do this but your average book-reader customer does not.
i think the "average" person knows how to resize text in their web-browser. but if not, let's teach 'em now! in firefox, which is the browser we are talking about, look under the "view" menu, where you will find "zoom". select "zoom in" for bigger text, "zoom out" for smaller. see, that wasn't so hard, was it? now you're smarter!
If you make the lines shorter it still doesn't wrap lines.
ok, so now everyone is in complete agreement here, right? firefox does not wrap the lines when displaying a .txt file. and there's no need for anyone to repeat this yet again, ok? we finally found something that everyone agrees on! great!
...if one has a display capable of usably displaying 80 chars per line, a display which is known generically as a "teletype display" -- circa 1970. The teletype was set at this number of chars to use up the entire width of a standard 8.5 wide roll of paper.
gosh darn, jim, thanks so much for that history lesson. if anyone is running firefox on a machine with a screen that is incapable of displaying an eighty-character-line, please say so, and we'll figure out how we can help you. our first suggestion will likely be to abandon the .txt file, and use the .html version instead, because it can reflow... so try that. if it doesn't work, come back for more help! *** walter said:
And this is precisely the kind of message which makes volunteers go away. There is nothing constructive about this.
walter, i thought you said i was in your kill-file? so how come you're reading my posts, and even quoting them, and replying to them? why, walter? -bowerbird
Zoom In/Out affects all web pages. With Firefox you can set separate default sizes for proportional fonts and monospaced fonts: - Tools - Options - Content - in the "Fonts & Colors" section, click the Advanced button, and set font sizes to suit. Al -----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Bowerbird@aol.com Sent: Monday, October 31, 2011 11:34 AM To: gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org; bowerbird@aol.com Subject: [gutvol-d] let's concentrate on helping users who need help jim said:
I know how to hack browsers to do this but your average book-reader customer does not.
i think the "average" person knows how to resize text in their web-browser. but if not, let's teach 'em now! in firefox, which is the browser we are talking about, look under the "view" menu, where you will find "zoom". select "zoom in" for bigger text, "zoom out" for smaller. see, that wasn't so hard, was it? now you're smarter!
If you make the lines shorter it still doesn't wrap lines.
ok, so now everyone is in complete agreement here, right? firefox does not wrap the lines when displaying a .txt file. and there's no need for anyone to repeat this yet again, ok? we finally found something that everyone agrees on! great!
...if one has a display capable of usably displaying 80 chars per line, a display which is known generically as a "teletype display" -- circa 1970. The teletype was set at this number of chars to use up the entire width of a standard 8.5 wide roll of paper.
gosh darn, jim, thanks so much for that history lesson. if anyone is running firefox on a machine with a screen that is incapable of displaying an eighty-character-line, please say so, and we'll figure out how we can help you. our first suggestion will likely be to abandon the .txt file, and use the .html version instead, because it can reflow... so try that. if it doesn't work, come back for more help! *** walter said:
And this is precisely the kind of message which makes volunteers go away. There is nothing constructive about this.
walter, i thought you said i was in your kill-file? so how come you're reading my posts, and even quoting them, and replying to them? why, walter? -bowerbird
Great, but you-all are talking to the wrong audience. Gutvol-d is basically computer nerds, PG user base isn't -- at least not all. Go out there to the various "real world" user forums and answer them their real-world questions like: "Hey, I just downloaded a simple text file from PG and it looks like crap. Can't they even do a simple text file?"
OOOOOPPPPPPPsss! Gutvol-d is hardly made up of computers nerds! Sure they like to think they are, but from what I read I can see that they no very little about how computer systems work. They be knowledgable is certain fields in computer use, yet most do not have a good idea how to put every thing together. Just for sake of argument, real nerds reinvent the wheel to fit there needs, aka master format. Which is not hard to do they would also create the tool chain to go along with it and not use the tools and formats out there. That way they avoid a lot of headaches! regards Keith. Am 31.10.2011 um 20:14 schrieb Jim Adcock:
Great, but you-all are talking to the wrong audience. Gutvol-d is basically computer nerds, PG user base isn't -- at least not all.
Go out there to the various "real world" user forums and answer them their real-world questions like:
"Hey, I just downloaded a simple text file from PG and it looks like crap. Can't they even do a simple text file?"
Gutvol-d is hardly made up of computers nerds!
Sorry, I meant Gutvol-d is made up of "computer nerds" compared to the "average e-book reader" who doesn't know what a txt file is, nor ascii, nor utf-8, nor Unicode, nor EPUB, nor Mobi, nor AZW, nor even HTML. "The average e-book readers" probably know how to fire up a web browser, and navigate web pages, they may even know that this is the "internet." They probably don't know it's called a web browser, they might call it Firefox, or Internet Explorer, or Chrome. They probably know how to read email, and the basics of how to run (sorry) Microsoft Word and maybe even Excel. They may have discovered the "Word Wrap" option, and they might know how to resize windows. They might know how to use the left button on their mouse, but probably not the right one. They probably can't successfully do a "double click" and don't understand why sometimes "things work" and sometimes they don't. They certainly don't know where to find a piece of "Word Unwrap" software and if they were told to get one they would (quite-rightly) feel insulted. If they own an e-book reader they may have figured out what the hard buttons on the design do. They probably have no idea how to do a "three finger reset" on the device when it crashes. They probably don't know the different menus on the device, nor do they care. They may have figured out successfully how to buy and download a book from the manufacturer of their e-book device. They *might* be able to download a "free" book from a different location if you give them (literally) a button by button exact account of what they need to push to make it happen. They probably don't understand that the "magic" that causes a doc file to open in Word and an excel file to open in Excel is due to different file formats and file extensions, nor do they understand that they can change these associations in the OS.... etc.
Well that was a eye full! ;-) But, I have look at what some of these "nerds" have written and done. Well, pretty much the same as far as programming and design goes. I would doubt very much that they truly know anything on the subject. Just because you can write a script or program does not mean you are a programer. Maybe, we can agree on geeks! regards Keith. Am 02.11.2011 um 17:59 schrieb Jim Adcock:
Gutvol-d is hardly made up of computers nerds!
Sorry, I meant Gutvol-d is made up of "computer nerds" compared to the "average e-book reader" who doesn't know what a txt file is, nor ascii, nor utf-8, nor Unicode, nor EPUB, nor Mobi, nor AZW, nor even HTML.
"The average e-book readers" probably know how to fire up a web browser, and navigate web pages, they may even know that this is the "internet." They probably don't know it's called a web browser, they might call it Firefox, or Internet Explorer, or Chrome. They probably know how to read email, and the basics of how to run (sorry) Microsoft Word and maybe even Excel. They may have discovered the "Word Wrap" option, and they might know how to resize windows. They might know how to use the left button on their mouse, but probably not the right one. They probably can't successfully do a "double click" and don't understand why sometimes "things work" and sometimes they don't. They certainly don't know where to find a piece of "Word Unwrap" software and if they were told to get one they would (quite-rightly) feel insulted. If they own an e-book reader they may have figured out what the hard buttons on the design do. They probably have no idea how to do a "three finger reset" on the device when it crashes. They probably don't know the different menus on the device, nor do they care. They may have figured out successfully how to buy and download a book from the manufacturer of their e-book device. They *might* be able to download a "free" book from a different location if you give them (literally) a button by button exact account of what they need to push to make it happen. They probably don't understand that the "magic" that causes a doc file to open in Word and an excel file to open in Excel is due to different file formats and file extensions, nor do they understand that they can change these associations in the OS.... etc.
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participants (4)
-
Al Haines -
Bowerbird＠aol.com -
Jim Adcock -
Keith J. Schultz