20 Responses so far

1. 1. Steve Buchheit on May 31st, 2007 at 12:23 pm

   Um, okay, isn’t Ragamuffin in RTF already (the files sure look it to me)? Do you mean turning the Ragamuffin RTF into PDF, and the Crystal Rain PDF into RTF?

2. 2. Tobias Buckell on May 31st, 2007 at 12:26 pm

   Ragamuffin is in PDF and I’m translating it chapter by chapter into RTF. I have the PDF I’m slowly translating, and I need someone to do it for me so that I can get on doing other stuff.

3. 3. Greg on May 31st, 2007 at 12:30 pm

   Tobias, I’ve turned pdfs into txt files (in Win XP) using the “Save as Text” function in Adobe Reader. It is under File, beneath “Save a Copy” in the dropdown menu. Then you can use Word to turn it from .txt to .rtf.

   It might be different for book-length files, though.

4. 4. Tobias Buckell on May 31st, 2007 at 12:34 pm

   I corrected the post:

   “yes, I know I’ve been posting Ragamuffin rtf files, and thank you for the tips on how to save as txt or rtf, I am aware of how to do this, but a lot of the formatting is lost so I have to go through and indent the text and make sure it all came out okay, as pdf to txt can by squirrelly.

   What I need is for someone to go through and copy/paste or save as from PDF to rtf, then make sure the line breaks and paragraph breaks and indents are in the right places and so on so that it’s easily readable.”

   I need someone to go through and clean it up after doing a save as, as it comes out oddly formatted at times.

5. 5. Greg on May 31st, 2007 at 12:43 pm

   Ahh…right…you aren’t dumb. So my efforts in practicing converting the 9/11 Report to txt were a bit of waste…oh brother…

6. 6. Greg on May 31st, 2007 at 12:48 pm

   For the record, the 9/11 Commission Report came out real well when saved as txt and converted to rtf. Everything seems to be in the right spot, at first scroll.

   I’d say you’re doing enough of a service simply by posting it. If there’s any problems, I’m sure some anal retentive enterprising reader would be happy to volunteer to fix it.

7. 7. Greg on May 31st, 2007 at 12:52 pm

   Also, for the record, turns out that bin Laden was actually Leland Palmer. Guess nobody bothered to read the whole thing…

8. 8. tobias s buckell on May 31st, 2007 at 1:00 pm

   Greg try doing it with http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/sampler/crystalrain-firstthird.pdf and kick it out to me. If all the formatting is in place all I’d have to do is just post that version you sent me, and you’ll gain yourself a free book and AMZN gift certificate

9. 9. Greg on May 31st, 2007 at 1:31 pm

   I didn’t say I was volunteering. There’s a lotta dialogue in that book…

10. 10. Ryan on May 31st, 2007 at 3:12 pm

    Does this look like what you’re looking for?

    http://corknut.org/misc/crystalrainfirstthird.rtf

11. 11. Greg on May 31st, 2007 at 3:17 pm

    Ryan beat me to it. Probably better, too: http://www.lstr.net/crystalrain-firstthird.rtf

12. 12. Greg on May 31st, 2007 at 3:19 pm

    And he only beat me by five minutes. I should really stop flapping my gums around here!

    No worries, the time spent was in protest of my HR department.

13. 13. tobias s buckell on May 31st, 2007 at 3:20 pm

    Ryan, that formats okay, Greg, yours is roughly what I can get on my own, but I have to sit there and indent each and every line. If I could get what Ryan posted but with the text hiccups in it formatted out, that’s what I would be looking for.

    You willing to smooth that out Ryan? It’s pretty close to what I need.

14. 14. Greg on May 31st, 2007 at 3:33 pm

    Ack, I’ve been beat. If it is just the indenting, that’s been fixed. I didn’t italicize the italicizables, however.

15. 15. Greg on May 31st, 2007 at 3:39 pm

    And I’m not whining for a gift certif. I do notice, however, that you’ll be in Ship’burg later this month. Let me know if you ever get to do a signing in Philly. Mebbe you can get PSFS to hook you up with a signing spot.

16. 16. Wyman Cooke on May 31st, 2007 at 4:48 pm

    I have a friend, Joe Buckley, who collects snippets with the author’s permission and presents them in HTML format on his web site The Fifth Imperium. Everyone from David Weber to S.M.Stirling is represented there. I’ve considered mentioning this before, but I didn’t know if the idea would interest you.

17. 17. Tobias Buckell on May 31st, 2007 at 5:01 pm

    Hey Wyman, tell him he can excerpt anything from www.tobiasbuckell.com/crystalrain or www.tobiasbuckell.com/ragamuffin if he’d like!

    Greg, that looks solid and I don’t see any formatting issues. Give me a second to look over it and either you or Ryan will will win.

18. 18. Wyman Cooke on May 31st, 2007 at 5:48 pm

    Will do.

19. 19. Ryan on May 31st, 2007 at 7:40 pm

    FWIW, I updated my version and removed all the inconsistencies I could spot.

20. 20. Tobias Buckell on Jun 1st, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    rockin

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