Glowfic Ebooks

[Alicorn]

Thanks! I'll get these uploaded and pointed-at presently.

[DanielH]

I was going to give the link to a friend to ask for feedback, and I couldn't find it on your website. Did I just fail at searching, or is there something wrong with the files such that you decided not to actually upload or point at them? If it's the former, where are they linked from; if it's the latter, how can I improve them? When looking, I did find a link to the old mirror, which is not as pretty and doesn't contain newer content (like the Milo section) but is still functional.

In fact, how can the files be improved, even if that's not the reason I can't find them? Already on the todo list, in no particular order, are:

• Show character names in headers along with usernames (e.g., instead of just “her_imperial_radiance”, an icon, and the date, have “Princess Elspeth Annarose Cullen (her_imperial_radiance)”, as the site does for main posts)
• See if there's some way to get moiety information available in an accessible way without clutter (if anybody reading this knows about colorblindness accessibility, please contact me).
• Get dates and icons into chapter headers as well as comment headers
• Distinguish intros from comments in some better way than the hastily-crafted borders in the current epub (design suggestions welcone)
• Test kindle compatibility better, and improve any issues
• Add apendices for Bellbook and information here
• Refactor script to allow use on other glowfic, and so use it
• Make it easier to update, or perhaps even get automatic updates, based on new chapters/tags.
• Add the “how to read” page to the front
• Get a file for edits to apply when generating with author approval (so far the only typos fixed are changing &lt to actual less-than signs, when other typos or potential edits also exist). This is trivial from a technical standpoint, but difficult because I don't want to request author time for fixing things but I also don't want to make unauthorized edits; suggestions welcome.

I am completely open to suggestions, and willing to not make some of the above changes if the authors disagree that they'd be improvements (others, like Kindle compatibility improvements, I'd also want very good arguments against). Some things I think would he nice to have, but are not on the list because I don't see how to accomplish them, are adding headings to different branxhes (so, for example, the Storming of Downside chapter would have a section labelled “this is Upside”, not just the table of contents), getting the metadata ToC of the epub and mobi to recognize the groupings of the chapters (easier in Incandescence where the groupings are named), and getting a door to go here so our world will be in line for magical Belling (probably worth it even if they put Alicorn and kappa on trial for crimes against humanity)

[Kappa]

Regarding character names, sometimes the name associated with the journal is not the name of the character speaking, if a journal is reused for multiple differently named instances of a template or if people are borrowing each other's journals for reasons. I'm not sure how much that matters for your purposes.

[Alicorn]

The DW "How To Read Effulgence" page links to what I think is the most recent EPUB and MOBI, but it could have slipped my mind. I should really link them from the mirror too. I might have not gotten around to updating the HTML mirror.

Checking now it looks like I did not in fact even update the MOBI and EPUB... fixing...

[DanielH]

Alicorn: oh, I see now. Now before everytheng else on that todo list is figure out why I can't open that file. It's almost certainly just a temporary problem on my end because I haven't had trouble with it before and my tablet's already acting weird.

Kappa: It wouldn't be able to tell if there were different chsracters using the same account (except across continuities; I could give Ice the right nickname as long as shs didn't appear in the same ebook as Amariah), and I know it wouldn't be perfect. I think it would, on.the whole, be better than username without character name, but I could be wrong.

As for borrowing journals, do you mean where a background character is speaking under the usename of a major character instead of under the pythbox/alicornutopia/etc accounts (or impersonation, like a Mark using the Miles account), or do you mean authors borrowing journals like if Alicorn were to want to write using a Matilda journal for some reason? In the first place, I think that's clear from context with or without the character name visible (or in the impersonation case, if it's not clear from context it's not supposed to be); in the second case I have a hard time imagining the reasons for that, but also don't see why it'd be relevant here (and it already shows the wrong moiety color).

Now that I think about it, I might also be able to use tte icon to help with character name. For example, I could map If_at_first-with-this-icon to the name Alymbel, If_at_first-with-that-icon to Beluna, Pythbox-with-this-third-icon to Father Christmas, etc. That wouldn't be a complete fix, but would help with some minor characters. It would require reworking that part of the program more than I'd intended, but not by much.

Edit: Completed last paragraph after accidentally submitting early, add last sentence to first paragraph

[Marri]

I think the issue would be more with cases like how the Sherlocks regularly share journals. I know the Sherlocks from Chronicle, Circle and Quinn all use calendarofcrime, for example.

[Kappa]

Cross-moiety journal-borrowing isn't a thing at all, as far as I can remember. But characters do sometimes appear using each other's journals, and it isn't always perfectly obvious from context, and having the wrong name showing probably won't help. And like Marri said, there are longstanding characters who exclusively use a journal that doesn't show their correct name.

[DanielH]

I can't think of when a character has used a not-theirs journal and I was confused by it, but that could just mean I don't remember or that I thought the journal's usual character was speaking. As I said, I won't put that in if you don't want me to, but I think it would help more than it would hurt. I also think if I switch the order to “username (Character Name)”, it might help with the confusion because people don't put as much weight on parenthesized things, and that there might be other ways to reduce confusion.

Sherlock/Tony pairs each use a pair of journals. Four journal pairs are standard, shared by all qualifying Sherlock/Tony pairs, with some exceptions: one pair of journals for each possible combination of genders for the pair of characters (Male/female genetics, trans/cis Sherlock), Sunnyvamp!Sherlocks move to eversomuchfun or dearsweetsoulful as appropriate, and I think there are more exceptions I can't think of at the moment. I don't rememrer where Kappa explained the details.

[Kappa]

That's true about the Sherlock-Tony pairs, and what it means is that if you implemented this change, Sarelle Dochenza would be going around with all of her comments marked (Sherlock Holmes). I find this vaguely unaesthetic and likely to cause small amounts of confusion in readers.

[DanielH]

OK, then I won't do it unless I come up with a way of not having that happen (or other glowfic authors want it, in which case I'll try to find where the majority of opinion lies).

I see the unaesthetic bit as already occurring with Sarelle Dochenza using an account with the wrong character name; can you articulate what part of labeling the comment directly is worse than the current indirect labeling? What if you could get the potentially wrong name in a tooltip on hover (which wouldn't work with all readers)