Gmail query
 

When I try to copy and paste verse into gmail as a Word document, after accessing gmail through Firefox, it downloads double spaced (and in the kind with hanging indents all flush left as well). I can find no way of changing this spacing.

Yet if I access gmail through Internet Explorer there is no problem and the download comes out as I had it in Microsoft Word and can be submitted in the body of an email as many editors request.

I feel I may be missing something obvious, so I wonder if anyone
has had had the same problem or knows what I’m doing wrong or not doing

Plain text mode used to fix the double-spacing issue, but doesn't in the new Gmail. A bit of poking in Firefox around suggests that Shift + CTRL + V will paste plain text.

Mysterious, perhaps, but I don't see the problem. Just use IE when you are submitting.

Thanks Rachael and Roger. Mozilla Firefox is supoposed to be more secure than IE, but certainly, as long as IE lasts, I can use that for submissions Annoying, though, that gmail has this odd quirk.

Rachael, forgot to say that your C + S+V suggestion works and delivers verse single-spaced . . . but in triplicate. I shall persevere . . .

Jerome - what do you mean as long as IE lasts? Do you know something I don't?

Yes. The problem is in Word itself. It adds so much junk into what looks like a normal file there's a whole industry of writing code strippers for word. Here's an example:

http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet-a...ormatting.html

Because of this, I don't know why anyone would use Word for serious writing, but people have their habits. I don't run IE or Firefox, so I can't make a recommendation, and can only offer a search string suggestion. Try googling firefox microsoft word code stripper paste, or some variation on that theme. I'm pretty sure you'll find something.

Good luck!

Thanks,

Bill

Thanks, Bill. You open up new and hellish cyber-vistas. I've always used Word, on the better the devil you know principle, and had no idea of these
pullulating digital depths.

I probably won't fully understand your answer, but what do you use in fact?

I haven't tried this myself, but I'm told that uploading a Word document into Google Docs and letting it convert to Google's format (an option on upload) will strip the code as Bill describes, while leaving key formatting in place.

But I still don't see why you'd bother. Just use IE, which probably works best because Microsoft makes sure that its word processor gets along well with its browser.

Thanks, Roger. I tend to use MF rather than IE these days as MF is said to be more secure, and gmail tries to convert me to Googlechrome when I use it via IE and says not all features may work properly in the IE it no longer supoports.

I don't know what security threats are troubling you, but I can't imagine more than a theoretical difference between IE and Firefox or Chrome. Anyway, if you only use IE to submit stuff via Gmail, what could the security threat be? You won't be browsing on IE or gathering cookies and trackers on IE, just using Gmail to make submissions. Actually, dividing your browsing time over multiple browsers tends to increase your security because your browsing trail is not centralized in one browser.

Jerome,

Move to windows 8, and stop worrying about security. For myself, I use chrome... it's far superior to IE. Technical considerations aside, it's lighter, faster, and developers write extensions for it first. Most of those never get to IE.

As far as process goes, I never compose locally. By that I mean I don't use stand alone software on my local machine. I have a remote site set up, on a private wordpress host, where I can configure my own text editor. The one I'm using right now is called TinyMCE Advanced, which lets me change my settings according to that day's requirements. More info here: http://wordpress.org/plugins/tinymce-advanced/

Experience has taught me to never trust a hard drive, especially not a local one. I'm set up so that when I click save, the text is stored in three different places. It's also saved in a format that can be cut and pasted reliably into any format an editor might require.

Best,

Bill

Thanks Roger and Bill. Roger, IE, or at least my version of it, is no longer supported by gmail, so not all features may work, they say. Even in IE, although it single spaces, unlike gmail accessed through Firefox, trouble can come when there are indentations. Not a problem with attachments,
but some editors specify 'body of email only' for fear of viruses.

Bill, you're far ahead of me in these matters. Thanks for the info, filed for the upcoming upheaval period of re-equipping and re-jigging when the XP I've used since 2002 stops being supported next April.

Stop dilly-dallying. Go get a new machine. I was helping out a granny last week with her old xp box. Finally gave up, drove over to microcenter, and got her a perfectly nice windows 8 box for under 300 bucks (which was less, by the way, than she'd already paid other people to try to fix the old one).

Running an old box like that is equivalent to deciding the 'best used by 2006' date stamp on that can of crabmeat in your pantry can be safely ignored. Yes, you may live, but you likely wont want to... ;)

OK. That's it. I can't shut up any longer.

I'm a Granny, living in fear of the Young Turks who would throw my current computing arrangements out of the window and insist on my having something which they think would suit me better. Who, with apparent deference, suggest that I should lean forward and suck the bubbles from the rim of the new vintage, while I can feel the relentless pressure they are exerting on the back of my neck.

Well, back off and listen.

This has nothing to do with relative poverty or fear of technology. I write in my head, on paper and on screen. I use Word 97 because that's the last word-processing programme that was designed for writers first and foremost. And I browse, most of the time, with Internet Explorer because it is the only one that allows me to use Good Google, a dreamy Narnia into which I creep via a special door in the back of my musty old wardrobe which smells of lavender and old ladies.

Good Google waits like a sweet servant, offering me a clean empty box into which I type my requirements. It waits till I've finished. It does not second-guess with predictive text, it does not "autocomplete". If it feels I have made a mistake it will ask gently "did you mean...?" but if I didn't, it will conduct my original search without fuss.

I have tried to establish this gateway on other computers, but I think it has been closed. Probably by Google, having decided that Narnia is not for grown-ups.

I have to be constantly alert. I use Adobe Flash Player, which I update regularly, despite the fact that there is a little hidden box, pre-ticked, that will automatically download Chrome if I'm not super-vigilant.

It is part of my individual human condition that I cannot be doing with onscreen busyness. It is as confusing to me as loud, extraneous noise. On eBay, for instance, I have to look sideways and scroll away from ads that pop out and jiggle at me.

That, I know, is my personal problem and nobody else's but the point I am making, I hope, is that, as a sentient, thinking Granny, I CHOOSE my "outdated" systems because they serve MY purpose better than anything newer that I have tried.

I give thanks constantly for the computer whizz-kid on my high street who respectfully keeps my old writing-and-researching system going, while helping me to equip myself with, and understand, the hard-and-software I'll need in my new role as Editor.

Thank you for the ranting-space. I'm now off to Narnia to find a scholarly crib for my bakeoff submission - if I can just move these old fur coats out of the way...

I use whatever box I can get cheap, probably second-hand. After two or three years it gets very slow or it gets totally fucked up and I get another. Simples, as the rodents say.

Security? What security? Why should I care about security? How do I get the bloody adverts off my email?

Ann,

Of course, you're right. In my defense, it was my third trip to her house. This time, I'd come prepared: I had a drive loaded with rkill, malwarebytes, and every anti-trojan program known to the civilized world. This sector of the galaxy has rarely seen a team so well equipped.

I counted EIGHT separate trojan horses running on that machine. Not viruses, not bits of malware. Trojans. And they were ugly ones. Clearly, it was a node on a botnet, and was busy sending spam to every corner of the known universe. So busy, no real program would run.

So I took it off the network. But trojans are smart these days. That just made them draw up their defenses. They knew I was out there, and they were having none of it. After yet another hour of just trying to kill processes and load rkill, I decided to raise the siege. Some castles simply aren't worth capturing.

Yes, there were other things I could have done. But there would always be another Ephialtes of Trachis out there. In this case, Ephialtes was her teenage grandson, who desired illicit material, and would click any link to get it. "This program isn't safe to run," the machine certainly said, "should I run it anyway?" "Yeah, sure," said Ephialtes, as visions of a scantily clad Emma Watson danced through his head.

So I got her something he couldn't mess up, no matter how many hormones addled his brain. A nice refurbished machine, clean and shiny. In a few weeks, I'll go back, boot the old one to linux, and save all her pictures. Even the pictures of Ephialtes. Meanwhile, the persians can shout and clamour and dance around Xerxes all they want. They aint gettin' through the hot gates.

Thanks,

Bill

Geez, John. Why aren't you running Adblock?

https://adblockplus.org/en/chrome

Thanks,

Bill

Why isn't everyone using an Apple? I have no problems (knock on wood) with viruses or anything else. Annie, I wish for you a brand-new iMac with a big, clear screen. It's easy, cheap, safe, and simple.

Bill, do you keep a blog of your daily adventures? I'd love to subscribe!

Nausheen :)

I agree, Nausheen.

Bill, that was a glorious, liberating read, wherein you addressed most of my misgivings. I still feel for your granny, but now for different reasons, though I think her box's nemesis is Sinon rather than Ephialtes.

We do live in different worlds, you and I, but now and again it's really worthwhile (and fun) shaking hands through the ...er...Window, though neither of us is prepared to step through the door. Respect, and thanks.

Mary - I am shocked! Et tu, Brute? (I'm laughing like a drain, though. You eternal Eve, you!)

Golly, I didn't realise my little problem with email indentation would cause the digital deep to moan round with so many voices. Well, not moan exactly.

All very instructive and entertaining. I sympathise with Ann's desire to keep it simple. Bill has terrified me into vigorously and rigourously backing up my pathetic 20 gigs (half the hard drive of my eleven year old Targa Visionary, Lidl's finest, which survived the spilling of a glass of Rioja into its keyboard in its first week of operation.) The beginning of a long and possibly winding road towards modernising before Targa the Rotter's visions become a bit too apocalyptic, but having endured so much together it's a bit like the situation with the dog in Of Mice and Men.

I shall ponder. Perhaps an Apple a day would keep the virus away?

OMG, here is the thread addressing all my current woes.

I too am a Granny and using what I've always used, IE and Word.

But sensitive to what the younguns advise, I've also added Foxfire and Google Chrome, and I have recently discovered that most of my woes stem from that.

No matter how many times I try, a download of Adobe Flash will not let me play videos on IE. I have to go to Google effing Chrome to see them.

And Google elbows its way into what I am viewing to suggest that I look at something else, when the mouse passes over certain underlined words in FB or accessed sites, I get messages to read something else.

It is, at the least annoying and breaks into my thought when I'm trying to get a handle on some issue, and at the most, soberly frightening, when I realize that all this interchange is being saved somewhere to monitor and define me, and to tailor my access to information by channeling me to purchase something or give up thinking entirely.

As far as I can figure out, Google has purchased Adobe Flash. Is that correct?

So they control what I can see, and what videos I can watch.

Also they keep asking me via a "poll" for "people in my area here in Sweden" how often I use effing Chrome and other questions. I always answer it differently, because I can't use the flash player without answering it.

And if this were real life I'd be tempted to put a log over the tracks to derail them. Obviously no people would be hurt, there are no people on board that train, only the wallets of one-percenters.

I'd be very surprised. Adobe's a publicly traded company, and a stock buyout would make major news.

My father used to say if you could put a penny in front of every wheel of a train, the train couldn't move. Not sure if that's true or not, but I'm pretty certain logs wouldn't help much either... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

Q&A1. OK what do Grannys know about who is doing whom? I can't download for IE anyway.

Q&A2. A really, really, BIG log? Stacked on some pennies? All virtual, of course.