Sadly, Windows won the day. I want to work seamlessly between my desktop and a laptop, both of which are currently Windows-based and run Office 2007. I looked at Docs again, but it's still missing key features for me, although change tracking now exists. I ended up getting a refurbished lightweight Dell for $300, running Windows 7. Apparently they're going to have to pry Windows 7/Office 2007 out of my cold dead hands.
Thanks to all for your input.
Dirk
Thank you, all. I keep finding reasons why Chrome OS won't do. It's unfortunate. I seem to be stuck with Windows.
My ancient Windows laptop is finally uttering death rattles, and I'm looking for an inexpensive replacement. I've come to despise Windows with a passion, with its endless patches and lousy cpu/hard drive/memory management.
I'm looking at Google Chrome OS machines, since I pretty much live in my Chrome browser. However, I also need a word processor with change tracking and MS Word-style comments that is compatible with this site and book publishing file formats. Preferably free or inexpensive, although I'll pay a monthly fee if I have to just to avoid MS Bloatware.
Suggestions?
Thanks
Dirk
Indeed... the loss of power to the group is somewhere on the scale between Deanna Troi and a Red-shirt.
What would STTNG be without her watery eyes and heaving breasts? It's the closest Star Trek ever came to porn, unless you count Klingon mating rituals.
I think you should build her up as the obvious baddie to the first story, where the duel is the climax to the story arch. The trick is how to tie her into the bigger story in a meaningful way. Include mystery and sleuthing about something BIG going on, preferably with Alina as the presumed focal point. When she dies, it serves as the trigger to smoke out the real villain in part two.
Are you still thinking of splitting Acts into two? If Alina is to be just a speed bump in Acts, it would be nice for her to still have some ties to the overarching mystery of Acts, rather than just the resident bitch. I came away with the impression that her character arch ran in parallel to the real story, which is why I didn't care when she died. Kind of like Emperor Augustus. He's meh in my story. Not sufficiently well set up to care when he dies.
Whoa... wait a second there, stop the press. Didn't Behira bring back Sil in the form of a human after Kha killed her as a dragon?
I begin to see this isn't quite the simple tale suggested by Acts. I hope I can follow all the threads...
It would be so easy to plug her and her school into the larger picture of the endless search ancient mages and the story.
I agree. Perhaps that's why I never warmed up to her. To me she was meh. The second half of Acts is when things got interesting for me. However, I made the mistake of starting with the wrong book, so take that with a grain of salt.
You still haven't numbered your book titles, BTW. Hint.
Just getting caught up with this thread. Amy, Star Wars VII was not based on George Lucas's wishes. He offered Disney a three-part story treatment he had done, but they decided to do a reboot film instead. He has subsequently distanced himself from the film, complaining that it was just a rehash of old ideas. Like it or hate it, that film was all J. J. Abrams's work. Although I really like the diversity Abrams brought to the film, I'm generally not a fan of his work. I do plan to go see it anyway, even though I couldn't wait and read all the spoilers. 
I spend more for printers. $12.50 for each of the six cartridges. I stretch them by overriding the default settings and printing in text or text-and-image mode. I don't know what I'll do for my next printer, though.
I recently bought the Epson Workforce 3640 all-in-one printer for $120 at Staples. It's a bit big, but a fantastic home printer. I haven't used all of its features yet (there are so many), but it includes two paper trays with a capacity of about 500 pages total (no more frequent out-of-paper errors!). It also includes a feeder tray (at last!). I use it for printing, copying, and scanning. As with all Epson printers, the software bundle is a bit bloated. Nevertheless, I love the thing.
Thanks, Sol.
Can you please expand on how the three parameters - access, display, and visible - work.
Dirk
Ok. No problem. It's been awhile since I played with these settings. If you want your Group threads to be private, just set the Visibility flag to No for the group. That will block those without membership in the Group. Search engines will not be able to access them either.
Sol, if we make the visibility flag No, does that make the whole group disappear for other site members? We were hoping to avoid the latter, since added traffic through the group can pay off in terms of ongoing valuable contributors and new readers for our works.
Thanks.
Dirk
WHat about asking for sponsorship from all members? I imagine that's too complicated.
I'd gladly kick in $20 toward these. One less vitamin supplement for a month isn't going to kill me.
Unfortunately, I'm on a fixed income. I'll be on Windows 7/Office 2007 until I drop dead.
It's good to know, though, that there simply isn't capacity for the time being. Reigns in expectations big time.
Thanks for the update.
Dirk
In addition to the above potential forum enhancements, a useful addition would be a keyword field to go along with new threads. Since there are any number of possible keywords of interest to a large site, it should be a text field that accepts comma-separated keywords. I think most people would quickly adapt to a core group of most commonly used keywords on the site and use them as well. And if they are commonly used, in time, it would be possible to add a popup screen to quickly select them, while still allowing everyone to enter custom keywords of their choice. The originator of the thread should be able to edit the keywords at any time, since a thread that generates a lot of interest would probably benefit from adding more keywords for archival purposes. For example, I would use the keyword 4017 on all threads related to my books, regardless of what group I post them in. I could then find them with a quick keyword search.
The keyword feature and quick access to the forum search might help alleviate the pain many of us are still feeling about the lack of a single best place to put our threads and find others.
Thanks.
Dirk
Vern, a key factor is that no publishing house will even consider us if all the plot spoilers are freely available on the net along with every comment ever made to anyone here in what is supposed to be a protected site. While anyone can join for a few bucks, it's a minimal level of protection to our intellectual property. They can't steal or expose something if they don't know it exists.
You have a valid point, Linda, and if some of it has to be public, so be it. Buyer beware.
However, we still don't know how to set group access, display, and visibility settings to create a group that is as open as possible to members while keeping the forum private. Sol said the forums can be made private, but the solution he offered didn't work. Several of us have tried. I also couldn't find a definition of access, display, and visibility in the site's help section.
I hope he'll weigh in with a clearer explanation about this.
You also have to consider posting in any thread where you don't really have much control as to what others say in the same thread. I've been in a number of threads that went off the rails into ranting arguments. Most of us just quietly exit the thread. However, if it's public, your name is tied to its content, including whatever rude or inappropriate comments are being made. Just imagine, everything we've ever said or asked in Premium is public for the whole Internet.
Sol, can you please summarize for everyone what the difference is between group access, display, and visible settings, and how to set each of them so that our forum posts are not accessible to everyone on the Internet.
Right now, the Medieval Fantasy Magic group (run by Amy) is preparing to go completely dark to keep our forum posts private within the TNBW site. Unfortunately, that will mean anyone who likes to read forum posts within the group before joining and posting their work or forum comments there will no longer be able to do so. They won't even know it exists. We'll become even more siloed than we already are.
This is a big deal! Everything we've ever said in any thread on this site is being laid bare for the whole Internet to see. Fat chance ever getting a book publishing deal if every uncensored moment about our writing and participation in these groups is visible to the whole world, including book spoilers and casual messgaes in any of the forums we've used to date.
Book publishers won't touch us because of the potential PR disaster of even one of our comments being taken out of context.
How come a book publishing site that goes to great length to protect the written books, stories, poems, etc., allows everything else we say to be read by non-members of the site. The forum posts are part of the writing process and should be treated just like the written work.
Please let us know how to handle this because, right now, there are quite a few power users of your site scrambling to figure out how to handle this situation and yet still allow for as much collaboration with others on the site to continue.
Thanks.
Dirk
Accidentally put this in Premium. Probably belongs here.
The following site could be useful to anyone who thinks grammar rules is the same as grandma rules!
http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/
Based on the discussion, I need to reduce my use of -ing. As Janet Reid has said, I think there's a place for them. Variety, spice of life, etc.
*gets ready to duck*
Thanks to all.
Dirk
Janet, what makes the -ing verb preferable on this example?
Norm d'Plume wrote:Why?
The same reason an author will avoid passive verbs and useless, vague, or weak adverbs. It weighs down the narration.
The very same reason an author actively will surely clearly avoid using passive verbs that come to his imagination when writing, weighing down the ongoing narration, making for his reading audience a boring lot of superfluous information, crunching out facts, and sweeping tidbits of floating debris washing overboard a Titanic, sinking fast, and on and on, ad infinitum till one falls off into sleep under the hypnotic power of same-sounding -ing words.
LOL. I can't tell if you like them or hate them. However, I freely acknowledge that the preceding sentence doesn't need the first instance of "them."
I can just feel the royalty checks rolling in.
At a minimum, it couldn't hurt to do what Sol suggested, which is to rename the label to New Book Chapters.
Why?
