User talk:MatthiasRat/Made Alone

Hey there. Just added a Work in Progress tag. --Buck 13:17, 23 January 2008 (EST)

Thank you, Jon!! I hope you are enjoying this story. You've got a great setting! --MatthiasRat 18:35, 23 January 2008 (EST)

One interesting thing about this story is the way the TG aspect comes out. Since nobody can see Christopher as a woman, it's basically all in his own head. She has to buy bras, and probably hygiene products, all by herself. In Tall Tales, DL decided to go all out for the newbie convention because only other furs can perceive her for what she is. Other than the practical details, it won't be an issue socially for Chris until she starts encountering other furs during her female phases. Once he hits male rat permanently, it's going to make quite a book. :) --Buck 18:55, 23 January 2008 (EST)

I've never really done much in the way of TG in my own works. Though I've written a few in Metamor Keep, I've never gotten into the head of a character who has TGed. The real question for Chris will be if she can admit that she's a she when she's a she, or will she continue to call herself he. ;-) --MatthiasRat 21:19, 23 January 2008 (EST)

Text as images

I notice you're converting text into jpegs for parts of this story. That takes a lot of bandwidth, is hard to edit, and the text-to-speech program I use to read stories on Shifti to me while I do other things is not going to like it. (I'm so lazy, I have machines read me bed-time stories :) May I suggest an alternative? You can accomplish pretty much the same effect by using a little CSS-styled HTML. I've put a demo over in Shifti:Sandbox, if you like I can apply that styling to the appropriate sections of text in the story for you. Bryan 03:06, 26 January 2008 (EST)

Oh, I forgot to mention, if you'll tell me which font, size, and line spacing you used I could probably match the appearance even closer. Bryan 03:15, 26 January 2008 (EST)

I'd very much like that! I struggled vainly to find some way to make the journal entries stand out, and naturally, it proved difficult. If you could get it started for me, I'd appreciate it. The font I used is Technical, size 14 Bold. I wanted something that at least looked like it might be handwriting! Thank you, Bryan! --MatthiasRat 05:57, 26 January 2008 (EST)

Hm. I don't have Technical on my system (Comic Sans MS is very similar though, and a standard font that's already installed on most systems, so I've made that the first fallback choice). When I boost the font size to 14pt and the font weight to bold the words become huge and cartoonish-looking compared to the images, so I've left it at 12pt and normal font weight for now. It's your story, though, so by all means tweak the styles on those divs to make it look right to you.

The text of one of the journal entries wasn't in the story's edit history, rather than retype all of that could you perhaps insert it? I'll do the formatting for it as well, and any subsequent entries you may add. Bryan 14:17, 26 January 2008 (EST)

Well, I know how to use style sheets, at least at a basic level. Seeing what you did, I can easily copy it. I've done so for the last journal entry. Thanks for taking care of this, Bryan! You've been a big help! Now I don't have to go through the agony of printing to PDF, copying to an image, and uploading it!

If I do mess this up, let me know and show me what I need to do to correct it. What other basic font sets do we have that the style sheet will recognize? --MatthiasRat 17:26, 26 January 2008 (EST)

I've made a minor change to make the page look more like the image. This was very tricky, but works — there is a lot that can be done with CSS that people don't usually realize. Some of the tricks (like the columns I stuck in) are counter-intuitive. (Sorry, BD, but your "float: left" scheme from the sandbox doesn't work well - I tried it here.)

As far as the "font families" go, there are enough. There are five "generic" families - 'sans-serif' (like Arial), 'serif' (like Times New Roman), 'cursive' (like Comic Sans), 'monospace' (like Courier') and 'fantasy' (which covers things like "Impact"). These can be combined with a lot of other font-rendering CSS attributes, like "font-style" (normal, italic and oblique), "font-weight" (which gives everything from very thin text (at 100) to very thick, bold text (at 900 - normal bold is 700 or "bold", standard weight is 400 or "normal"), "font-variant" which gives you "small caps" and "font-stretch" (which gives you the ability to change the spacing between characters).

Information about the current possibilities of CSS are available at http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ — I use this resource myself when attempting something I haven't done before. Other places you can look are A List Apart and The CSS Zen Garden – I've used both for help with various ideas.

ShadowWolf 17:59, 26 January 2008 (EST)

Had to undo the columns... Looked like this to me but looked like this to Jon. I'm guessing that the problem comes up when people actually have the proper font and it has different properties entirely from the "backup" and "generic" picks. Oh well, shit happens :)

ShadowWolf 18:12, 26 January 2008 (EST)