prog: (Default)
prog ([personal profile] prog) wrote2002-03-27 05:05 pm

I am Magneto or some shit

Yesterday I decided to cease using RTF with Macnut. I figured that I would be able to convert it to Word or something later, but, I'm now certain that I won't use Word for this project. I mean, the bloody thing costs $250.00. I could "borrow" a copy of Word X if I really wanted to, but I don't, for at least two layers of reasons. (I don't like software piracy, even when it involves you-know-who, and I don't like what I've seen so far of how MS Office X apps treat my Mac. (This does not extend to all MS apps; MSIE plays nice with the rest of my machine, not spewing daemon processes out like Doom II's endboss.))

So, I hand-converted the sucker into DocBook XML, and now I wonder why I didn't do that in the first place, as I can now convert the book into HTML on the fly, allowing my editor and I to get a handle at any moment as to how the draft is shaping up, just by visiting a website I set up for it.

While copying over the XML from the P&X files, I laughed upon the discovery of an author bio element in that book's meta-information section that Erik had written for me, and which had escaped my attention until now:

Jason McIntosh is a master of games and purveyor of oddities. He lives in a small, steel room, high above the frothing gray ocean. His companions include a sentient vending machine and a tiny fruit fly named Rolf.

Yes, I'm fairly certain that it won't show up in the colophon. (I wrote my own bio. It's different than that.)