I’m a bit of a junkie for markup languages: I’ve used many, experimented with more, and am always eager to try a new one. Pandoc is a delight of a tool that allows you to convert from one markup language to another. There’s a proper, installable tool you can put on your local machine to handle full files, which will do a whole lot of the work for you, but you’ll still need to do some clean up on the results.
Something I find useful in itself, though, is the Try pandoc online demo. Continue reading “Pandoc”
Tag: Productivity
Retrieving deleted files on Google Drive
Previously, I described how you can retrieve earlier versions of a file on Google Drive if you realise you need to roll back for any reason. But what if you’ve already deleted the file you want to roll back to? Well, again, subject to policy and space availability, Google Drive may well allow you to retrieve an archived version of a deleted file too. Continue reading “Retrieving deleted files on Google Drive”
Retrieving old file versions on Google Drive
I use Google Drive (and other cloud-based file storage systems) to access materials from a variety of locations, to share content easily with local and remote collaborators, and to have the reassurance of there being an off-site backup of what I’m working on. As an added bonus, I’ve recently discovered that if you realise you’ve messed up and over-edited a file, and would be better off starting over with a version from earlier in the day, or a few days ago, or a few weeks ago, you can access a list of the available versions of a particular file and reopen an earlier one to work with! Continue reading “Retrieving old file versions on Google Drive”
The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller
I loved this book. Saller, senior manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press and editor of The Chicago Manual of Style Online’s Q&A, has assembled a wealth of useful information and observation based on her experiences. Each chapter starts with a Q and ends with the corresponding A. The main body of the chapter is made up of musings, advice, rules and anecdotes relevant to the theme. And it’s peppered with recommendations of other texts, websites and tools that the author has found useful. It’s beautifully written, and a good humoured, gentle, easy read. Continue reading “The Subversive Copy Editor by Carol Fisher Saller”
Do not spellcheck!
Generally speaking, you should spellcheck everything you write. Word has some fairly decent in-built spelling and grammar checking, and while it may not get everything, it’ll catch a lot. However, on occasion, there’s content you really don’t want to spellcheck. Case in point: API/developer documentation rife with code samples: yes, I did mean to spell it that way; yes, it is all one word; no, I don’t want to capitalise that just because it’s at the start of a line; no, I don’t want a space after that semi-colon… And by the time you’ve hit Ignore for the umpteenth time in a row, you realise you’re back in body text, and you’re not sure how long you’ve been on auto-pilot clicking Ignore, and who knows what garbage you’ve said is ok to leave as is now, and you may as well go right back to page 1 and start over. So what do you do? Forego spellchecking entirely? Copy and paste the non-code-sample bits to a separate doc, spellcheck, then merge back in? Or magically tag the code samples as not to be spellchecked and live happily ever after? It’s a leading question, I admit it. The last option it is, and today’s post is on how to do just that! Continue reading “Do not spellcheck!”