Formatting Question for Archive Story

[wanderingaddict]

Hey, I've always been curious if there's a way to set the text-width/"page margins" or whatever to a smaller length for certain stories? Normally I like the way standard layout well enough, but sometimes it just feels more appropriate to submit it in the MSWord 6" width format. Is it at all possible to do that?

[DemonGoddess]

The archive functions more optimally by allowing the autowrap to work. Having said that, though, what you do is use a container tag.

<blockquote> text </blockquote>

That indents on both sides. If you want more of an indent than one does, you nest them.

i.e.

<blockquote><blockquote> text </blockquote></blockquote>

It'll take a little experimenting on your part, but you should be able to figure out how many will get you the desired results. I'd say at a guess it would be 3.

[wanderingaddict]

huh. okay, cool! thanks! I do usually like the wrap-around, but I was kind of thinking of giving something new a try. one more question though- now, is it

<blockquote> beginning of story

end of story </blockquote>

or is it

<blockquote> every single </blockquote>

<blockquote> line of </blockquote>

<blockquote> text in </blockquote>

<blockquote> the story </blockquote>

[DemonGoddess]

beginning of story, paragraph, or whichever you're wanting indented; and then close the tag at the end of the part where you want the indent.

[wanderingaddict]

hi again, I'm having a bugger of a time figuring out the coding to format the story. my new question is how to you command an indentation (or tab)? and why does

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'>Chet trotted through the relatively
civilized (at least, civilized for Xanth) forest that surrounded Castle Roogna.
The flora and fauna found this far out from the castle were of a wilder variety
than those found in the nearby orchards. Punwheels spun in nooks and crannies,
wild butterflies (which were good on toast) fluttered about a field of tiger
lilies, occasionally getting snarled at whenever they tickled a whisker or two.
There were plenty of pie-trees, should he get hungry, and a grove of
painful-looking dentist-trees, but he passed them all by, uninterested even in
the tiny snap dragons that hissed and fanned tiny flames at his hooves when he wandered
through their field. All of the greater dangers had long ago been driven off by
the humans inhabiting the lands, and most of what was left could hardly be
considered a nuisance, so the centaur was able to move through the woods with
absent-minded ease.</p> 

not reformat into a tab when I paste the same command (below) either over or next to the one above?

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='mso-tab-count:1'>            </span>In short, he
was a perfectly normal, albeit rather handsome, young centaur, and the life he
lived outside Castle Roogna was peaceful and idyllic and happy. </p>

basically the whole story is just indented in the most random places, pretty much just wherever auto-formatting took care of the indents itself? how do I correct this?

[wanderingaddict]

also, because I want to indent, I want to not use the standard web html format of skipping a line for every paragraph. how do I break/delete/remove this from the formatting?

[DemonGoddess]

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'>

That tag is not allowed in the archive, in that format. Only very basic tag formats are supported.

To add an indent, you'd do something like this, using the space tag -  

<p>     text here</p>

Without the use of a specific style sheet for each story, which is NOT supported in the software, html requires that you use the space tag to add more than one space before or after any word.

To avoid the default line between each paragraph when using the tag, simply make it one large paragraph, as you're wanting to use indents to indicate start of new paragraphs. Where you want the line break for the next paragraph to occur, you would use the line break tag - </br>

It can be inserted as either <br> or </br>, does not require an open/close statement.

[wanderingaddict]

thanks DemonGoddess, this is unbelievably helpful stuff.