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Terry Reigel

2 Jun 2007 Chat Transcripts

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The copies of the Chat logs above are in plain text format, which it has been pointed out is difficult to read with the long lines. Below is another version, in pdf format:

 

WG_Chat_2_Jun_2007_early.pdf

 

Here is an alternative in HTML format:

 

WG_Chat_2_Jun_2007_early.htm

 

Comments are welcomed on which of these, or the original text format above, is easier to use.

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The text files without wrapping is the format I like the least, but it only me takes a few seconds (6 keypresses or clicks) to select the whole text and paste it in Wordpad.

 

My vote for next time is do whatever is easiest.

 

Terry, thanks for your efforts.

 

Alvin

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Thanks to all who commented. Seems like most agree the pdf format is easiest to read and apparently causes no one a problem accessing. I've figured out an easy way to do it, so that will be my plan for future chats.

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Terry,

 

I don't feel strongly about this issue, and didn't pursue my earlier comment about HTML format because whatever is easiest for you is fine with me. Still, I thought you should see this article which takes a dim view of PDF docs on the web. Jakob Nielsen, the author, is controversial, but he usually backs up his assertions with references to usability studies and he is always worth reading...

 

PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

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John,

 

I agree, in general, that HTML is better suited to on-screen reading. It always opens seamlessly in the browser, adjusts line wraps to the width of the user's browser window, allows the reader to adjust font preferences, and avoids the artificial page breaks that the paper-oriented pdf format produces.

 

But in this case I think practicality trumps theory. I thought, and several commenters agreed, that indenting the continuation lines significantly improved readability. I don't know how to do that with anywhere near the ease in HTML that I can in a pdf. (With the pdf, having created a custom Word template, the process is simply copy, paste, save, and upload.)

 

I waited a while to see if anyone complained about difficulty in accessing the pdf, or the inability to control display fonts. No one did.

 

So, in what is in my mind a "quick and dirty" short-term posting, I think the pdf solution is the better one.

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Terry,

 

I used some Find/Replace calls to wrap text lines in table cells. The left-hand "TH" has the person's name, and the right-hand "TD" has their comment. The page is wrapped in some header/footer HTML that I use on my site, the actual content part is pretty simple. I used a TH (table header cell) so I could use CSS to set a different style for the left-hand cell.

 

Directory of Some Chat Transcripts

 

The basic HTML is:

 

<table>  <tbody>	<tr><th>person's name</th><td>comment</td></tr>	<tr><th>person's name</th><td>comment</td></tr>	...  </tbody> </table>

 

The hard part is not the HTML. The hard part was figuring out regular expressions in TextPad to convert the text to HTML.

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