Formatting Conventions

I hereby present a set of rules applied to all ASCII-files that are downloadable from this site. All the ASCII-files published on this site are edited by me, for legibility purposes only, adhering as much as possible to these rules. If there are any exceptions from these rules, it is clearly stated in the item's description.

My wish is that everyone should be able to enjoy these texts with as little effort as possible, which implies that as many authors of NetBooks and other writings as possible will comply with these rules.

After the rules themselves, there follows a little reasoning of some of the choices I've made, a suggestion for a nice text-editor for the Windows-based PC, as well as an example of how a properly formatted document would look like.

Comments, Suggestions, or Additions? Well, email me at olear@online.no then!

Intentions

Every user, no matter which program he's using or what platform he's on, should be able to view and print the document without having to tweak parameters like paper size, margins, window size, font and font size, and tabs.

Every document is organized (with respect to layout) in a similar manner so that the essential information clearly can be found. This, of course, implies that special sections like headers, author info, and tables clearly stand out from the rest of the text.

The Rules

Paragraphs

Paragraphs have no linebreaks. This only goes for paragraphs that are not indented, and effectively hinders justification of paragraphs (i.e. the insertion of spaces to make both left and right margins look smooth.
Text which is not paragraphs (tables, verses, etc.), or indented paragraphs, have linebreaks as position 81 (eighty-one). This means that every line contains 80 (eighty) characters at most (does of course not apply to "regular" paragraphs, as mentioned above).
Long sections of text can be formatted with paragraphs in either one of the following two ways (either one is as acceptable as the other):
- a) Paragraphs are not indented at all (no tabs or spaces), but each paragraph must then be separated by a blank line.
- b) The first paragraph in a section is not indented, but each subsequent paragraph is indented 5 (five) spaces. There are no blank lines between each paragraph with this method.

Organization

Major sections of text are separated by an 80 (eighty)-character wide line of dashes (-----), with an empty line BOTH above and below this line.
Tables, verses, etc. are indented 5 (five) characters to make them easily stand out from the rest of the text.
The header (for formatting, see below) should contain at least the following lines:
- Title of document.
- Version/revision number (if applicable).
- Author's name.
- Author's email and/or URL (if applicable).
- Last revision date (optional).
Before the text begins, give a brief (a few lines) introduction to the work, stating the purpose of it and any other immediate information. Separate with a line of dashes before the text begins.
Any disclaimer or copyright statement should be placed with the introduction, before the text begins.
The footer (if applicable), should be separated from the rest of the document by a line of dashes, and may contain additional information about the work, the author, and any additions and revisions that have been made. In general, everything that is not crucial to the enjoyment of the document should be placed here, at the bottom.

Specific Rules

All text that for some reason needs to be centered, is centered with respect to the standard line-width of 80 (characters). If the division does not add up, let there be one empty space more on the right side than on the left.
Do not use justification of paragraphs
Tabs are 5 (five) characters wide, and MUST be replaced with SPACES when the text is saved.
Headers, section names, table names, and monster/spell/item names (where the item is described), are all in CAPITALS.
Any email-addresses or URLs are enclosed within less-than (<) and greater-than characters (>).
The header of the document consist of several lines, each centered with respect to the 80 (eighty)-character wide line rule.
Separate each column in a table with at least 2 (two), preferrably 3 (three) spaces. If the table doesn't fit within the 80 (eighty)-character wide limit, split it up.
As a general rule, do not use ASCII-art or special characters like accented, language-specific characters.
If ASCII-art is "needed", use as a general rule only those characters visible on the keyboard (that is, no colored boxes, line-drawings, and the like). Dashes, lines, underscores, slashes, backslashes, parentheses (all types), asterisks, tildes, and apostrophes are all examples of acceptable characters.
It is recommended that frivolous use of ASCII-art and other illustrations be kept to a minimum, at or less than about 5% of the total size of the document. Specifically, ASCII-art which isn't an illustration, table, figure, etc., as a supplement or visual aid accompanying the text, is strongly advised against.
Do not use formatting characters like page breaks.
When quoting, use only DOUBLE, vertical quotes ("), at both ends of the quoted text.
Double-quoting (or quoting a quote) is achieved by SINGLE, vertical quotes (') within double, vertical quotes ("). ALWAYS use the SAME single quote at both ends of the quoted text.

Saving a Document

Replace tabs with spaces.
Remove trailing spaces.
Do not save with hard linebreaks.

Reasoning and Argumentation

Restriction of Line Width to 80 Characters

I have discovered at least four variants of text-widths among documents found on the 'net, none of which seemed better than the other.

First, it seemed like older texts that were ported from DOS or other character-based operating systems had rather short lines, in the range 60 to 70 characters per line. This, of course, seemed absurd to stick with, as almost any windows-based OS effectively extends this limit.

Second, files distributed via email and found for online-viewing seemed to have 72 or 73 characters per line. As I have been pointed out, this might have happened because of an old emailer that had this as an effective limit.

Third, most (reasonably old) text-editors on the PC (and Mac) seemed to fall down on either 75 or 76.

Fourth, files from UNIX-systems often had characters widths ranging from the mid-70's up to over 100.

I fell down on 80 characters, because although it doesn't seem like this is "standard" for contemporary PC and UNIX systems, it is nevertheless close enough. Whenever I opened NotePad on a PC or TextEditor on a Sun Solaris (UNIX), the windows almost always seemed to open up with enough room for 80 or 81 characters.

I wanted to have some more room than the 72-75 range, both in order to view more information per screen and to save some trees, but anything nearing 90 or 100 characters seemed a bit too far out. Therefore, since 80 is a more round number than 81, I decided in favor of the former.

As I've tried numerous text-editor (most on PCs but also some on UNIXes) I found very few that couldn't cope with that limit. With the obvious exception of MS-DOS's Edit. As long as you're on a windows-based OS, resizing of windows to cope with 80 characters is no problem.

There's also another reason: As the editors nowadays are as sophisticated as they are, they inherently have no problem with that width, either. With the advent of the Internet and the Shareware concept, such editors are readily available for download from software archives too numerous to even start mentioning. Therefore, technology did not either seem a viable limitation.

No Linebreaks in Paragraphs

I decided to save paragraphs without linebreaks because this gives the viewer at least some choice of how wide he will want to view/print the document. If not too loving of the limit of 80 characters, you can always print smaller or larger than this. Tables and other similar fixed-formatted sections won't look perfect in comparison, but that's easily overcome. If the tables are too narrow, it's only a cosmetic problem. If the tables are too wide, two or three clicks with columnar cut-and-paste and you're back in business.

Not having linebreaks also have the effect of eliminating justification of text, that is, the insertion of spaces to "fill out" lines so that the right margin also is smooth. Justification is even more a source of incompatibility than setting a fixed line-width, since the viewer is hopelessly constrainted in the choice of which line-width he will want to use.

The most important reason is, as stated, flexibility on behalf of the viewer. Technological constraints again seems no viable limitation.

Exclusion of ASCII-Art, Special Characters, and Formatting Characters

ASCII-art and other special formatting characters have one major disadvantage: Differing keyboard/language configurations. Since there is not only an American audience (no offense intended) out there, ASCII-art only help degrade the otherwise good impression of a document when the "nice" ASCII-art is not understood by the character sets and is replaced with other, weird characters.

Special formatting characters like page breaks are not recommened because they clearly violate compatibility, not only between operating systems, but also between applications themselves.

Tip for MS-Windows Users

If you're on a MS-Windows PC and have 'net access, you can get hold of THE BEST text-editor around, TextPad, at http://www.textpad.com. It is also found on many shareware CD-ROMs and CD-ROMs accompanying computer books.

TextPad is simply the best editor I've tried. It has lots of features, but not so many that it complicates its use. It is very simple to use, and without doubt the fastest I've ever tried. File size is only limited by the computer's memory.

It is also very clean to install and get rid of (as if you'd ever want to do that), and integrates seamlessly into any 32-bit MS-Windows operating system.

It automatically detects, reads, and saves in both PC, Mac, and UNIX-format text files.

It's shareware and it's cheap ($27-$35 depending on distribution).

It's well worth a try. You won't use another one.

As for TextPad, I've found the ideal configuration for these particular rules: 2.00 cm (0.78 in) margins on A4 (or US Letter; they differ only about 0.5 cm in width), and the "standard" Courier New size 10 printing font.

With this configuration, the text exactly occupies the whole sheet (it word-wraps so you'll have 80 (eighty) characters per line, which is just what I intended), and has enough room for holes for use with ring-binders. This configuration is accurate to about 1/5 cm.

Perfect!

Example

This is where an example will be places, as soon as I get around to it. Or maybe it should only be a zipped ASCII-file for you to download to behold in awe. I haven't decided yet.