Strict Open XML & Win10 on VirtualBox: An update on my search for the perfect word processor for writers.

This is where I was at last time I wrote about it this: Writing in the cloud: A free solution for long manuscripts >

Things I've learned since then:

• The MS Word editor built into Dropbox is outstanding. It's the result of a partnership between Dropbox and Microsoft and the cooperation shows, but I was having trouble editing Word docs. This is the error I was getting:

• Solution: Discovered this by just opening the problem doc in the full Word installation on Windows 10 and saving in different formats until I found one that worked in the Dropbox web editor. The format that worked? "Strict Open XML Document":

• (Strict Open XML is still a docx file, but doesn't include some Word-only formatting that as I understand contains legacy bits from older Word formats.)

WPS Writer Update

• WPS Writer for Linux is crashing when trying to open any Word doc.
• WPS Writer for Windows doesn’t seem to support Strict Open XML. At least, I can’t get it to work. (Odd that Linux and Windows versions of WPS Writer would start acting up on me at the same time; the Linux version hasn’t updated and isn’t on the same release schedule; in fact, it isn’t on any published schedule that I’m aware of.)
• Epic Fail: Discovered a need WPS doesn't meet: You can't reorder sections from the document navigator pane. Now, you can't do that with Dropbox's (or Microsoft' OneDrive) web editor, either, but when you need it, it's critical, so I had to work with the a full MS Word installation on Windows.

LibreOffice Update

LibreOffice 5 opens Strict Open XML just fine, and it allows you (though rather inelegantly) to reorder sections. It doesn’t, however, preserve images that are saved with Word in Strict Open XML format.

Why not use Google Drive? (which I like)

• Not sure I trust its built-in web editor for Word docs.
• Doesn't play on Linux.
• Doesn't play nice with Windows 10.

Where am I at today?

• Since I had to reinstall a full version of Word on Windows 10 to solve my Dropbox issue and reorder sections, I'm still using it.
• When I’m not using my Word computer at home, I use Dropox's Word editor.
• I’ll keep an eye on WPS, but I don’t have the time to figure which of the dozens of moving parts is causing the problem.

2016.10.21

c0

*** UPDATE ***

• Performance while editing long docs in the cloud (DropBox, OneDrive and Google) is really finicky. Can vary from adequate to unusable, whether I’m at McDonald’s or  plugged into my router. There are so many factors influencing this, there's no way I can make cloud editing 100% reliable.

So...  

• For home: a) Windows with full Word install and DropBox, and b) Windows 10 in a virtual machine on Oracle VirtualBox. This gives me access to Word and Windows on Linux. Not ideal, but no performance issues with my apps, and running Windows in a window is somehow ironically satisfying.
• Want to try it? It’s free and easy (and fun). Complete instructions are here: https://www.pcsteps.com/184-install-virtualbox-linux-mint-ubuntu/
• Away from home: Windows with full Word install and DropBox
• Using only Strict Open XML regardless.

2016.11.19

c0

Donald is red, Hillary’s blue ...

order turns on gossamer gears

and either

falls into a downy heap

or

floats apart as hoary seeds

strewn by grabbling breezes

--Streckfus Wort

Presque Isle

2016.11.08

Donald is red,

Hillary’s blue,

Elections are pointless

When you live in a zoo.

--Clarence Oddbody

2016.11.08

c0

About Book #4: 92,815 words. Perhaps I’ll share a chapter when I’m done and I’m actively seeking a publisher. Interested?

c0

A thought, a theory, a guess, and a rant.

(I still don’t know who I’m voting for, so please bear that in mind.)

A Thought:

Likely Hillary supporters are a noisy lot. Likely Trump supporters are quiet, mostly (I think) because voicing Trump support subjects you to ridicule, and that’s bad for careers, friendships, marriages, neighborhoods, etc.

A Theory:

A vote for Hillary is a protest against misogynistic husbands, boyfriends, bosses, coworkers, lecherous airplane passengers, and 500,000 years of gender role evolution (about the time we started wearing clothes and cooking our food).

We don’t like who we are and what mutating genes and collateral attributes have made us, so we blame our parents, God, church, each other, and anything else that’s tightly molded over our most indelible selves.

Hillary reminds me of a smug and prescriptive grammar teacher I once had. I can’t shake that unpleasant connection anymore than I can return to that ancient classroom to appreciate Silas Marner.  

A Guess:

The election will be very close and the loser will contest the results. The winner will be the subject of impeachment or legal inquiry within the first year.

(10/30/2016: An observation:

When someone remarks how crazy this election is, Hillary supporters often laugh. Trump supporters don’t.)

A Rant:

We tend to conflate ideas because it’s easier to support or condemn wide swaths of people (religion and decency; civil rights and abortion; marijuana and opiates; racism and color; etc).

But protection is protection, and it’s pretty meaningless if, instead of coexisting peacefully, we force everyone to share the same protected beliefs.

And it should apply to beliefs most of us hold (freedom of speech, association, worship) and those most of us don’t (freedom to hate, ridicule, and exclude). That’s one of the things that (up until I learned of Podesta’s “Catholic Spring”) I thought would never be in doubt.

What prompted my rant? Star Trek’s Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation) who cited the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision as an example of precisely why we need Hillary in the White House.

I like Wil Wheaton. I think he’s probably a good man. I also think he’s terribly wrong.

2016.10.26

c0

For those keeping, track: My book is at 92,446 words. Still expecting to end at 100,000 or thereabouts.

There's probably a special place in Hell for...

There's probably a special place in Hell for dirty old men that grope beauty contestants, but it's not as deep a hole as the one where persecutors go, the ones that trick or compel or subjugate, who judge others by how the neurons in their heads are wired.

Story: More Podesta: Hey, who’s up for a Catholic Spring to reject church’s "middle ages dictatorship"?

"There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church."--Sandy Newman, president of Voices for Progress, 2011 email

What doesn't bother me about the Podesta/Newman idea:

1. The Church (Roman, Orthodox, Reformed, and their thousands of heirs) will survive. It doesn't yield to threats like human institutions do, because it isn't one.

(And persecution moves outliers toward the center and strengthens ideology. If you want to make someone stubborn, just try forcing them to change their mind.)

What does bother me:

1. That an idea like this could germinate within a constitutional democracy that protects freedom of thought.
2. Than anyone outside a belief community would presume to change what's inside it.
3. That anyone would think subverting opposing ideas is better than tolerating them.
4. That so few care.

Some principles are so fragile, once they're rent, there'll be no mending them.

Leaders exhibit psychopathic behavior at 3 times the rest of the population (Forbes: The Disturbing Link Between Psychopathy And Leadership >) As others have noted, we're not voting for Pastor-in-Chief. Let's stop wishing Hillary's and Donald's flaws were fewer or lesser, and vote based on the likelihood a candidate will sustain the laws that guarantee our right to make a choice in the first place, choices some may deem misogynistic, misandristic, or medieval.

And who we choose may not be Hillary or Donald. I personally wish I had a good third choice. My hopes for Libertarian were dimmed ("What's Aleppo?"), so as I write this, I still don't know who I'm voting for.

Obama said today while campaigning for Hillary, "Democracy is on the ballot right now."

He's absolutely right.

2016.10.14

c0

My book is now at at 90,865 words. I edited out 2,000 in the last couple weeks and am now in the middle of moving some chapters around and adjusting details to retain continuity. The rest of it is roughly outlined. I'm just writing my way through to the end now. I've already written some final chapters and a postlog, which is a habit I have. I always have a strong sense of how a story will begin and end.

I'm lucky to get an hour a day on it. Most days it's 30 minutes.

Deplorable Me

These are some things in the American political process I’m noticing for the first time. And perhaps they’re happening for the first time, or for the first time in a long time:

• A sitting president actively campaigning for a candidate and attacking the opposition.
• Hyperbole passing for discourse with little or no deeper inspection.
• Stupidity largely going unchallenged.
  Fox News’ Ed Henry: “Did you wipe the server?”
  Hillary: “Like with a cloth or something?”
• A national political party manipulating the nomination process.
• A candidate being actively opposed by his own party, the opposing party, ridiculed by most of the press and the Western world, and still managing to maintain parity or a lead in the polls.
• A race coming down to two candidates who would in any other election cycle be laughing stocks for a mutual dearth of qualifications and embarrassing surplus of disqualifying statements and behavior.

On today’s NBC News homepage, a link states Hillary called “some” of Trump’s supporters “deplorables.” She actually said “half,” and went on to describe this half as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.”

The word “half” was hyperbole. The rest was not. And NBC’s choice to use “some” instead of “half” can only be an effort to douse an incendiary comment.

This sort of sleight of hand is so common, I’m afraid we’re inured to it, and it’s an example in miniature of choices that change the course of history.

[2016.09.10]

c0

Images not showing up?

Detail from the album Solace by the band Legion.
I dragged this image into Blogger's editor rather than
pasting from Google Docs.

Looks like images are broken in my recent posts. I'm using Google Docs to compose and pasting into Blogger's native editor to post. I can see the images when I'm logged in as Clarence, but not when I visit my own blog from a different account.

Guess I have some sleuthing to do. Too bad, was a pretty slick process. (I'm guessing it's a sharing setting on the images.)

I've been toying with an open source version of Live Writer called Open Live Writer, and also copying and pasting from some RTF editors to see if I can preserve tables and images. Some work better than others, but nothing works equally well on Linux and Windows. CherryTree was the most promising in that regard.

I've also tried posting via email, which lets me experiment with a variety of email editors, but then I lose control over image size & placement, and have no html control, so can't, for example, embed a video.

Looks like words an images will remain separate processes for now.

c0

R.I.P. Truman, August 25, 1984

A lost kite that flew too soon toward heaven.

Truman on Wikipedia >

If you read only one book of his, read Music for Chameleons.

c0

86,326

Since I was a child, I’ve fancied myself one day a wizened old man whispering apothegms between halting steps and puffs on a pipe. And now that I am closer to that fancy than the time I began imagining it, I realize how little I know, or others want to know.

Plus I quit smoking a long time ago. So I guess it all went south then anyway.

My book is at 86,326 words.

c0

Ist, ist, ist! (My heart is in Rome but my feet are in Erie)

Many denominational tensions stem directly from the role tradition continues to play in doctrine and worship.

The Good News was for nearly 2,000 years an audible experience. For much of that, the church was the center of town, geographically and socially. You could see and hear it from miles away. You started life being baptized at the altar and ended it being buried in the churchyard. Of the few printed bibles available, the one in your church was probably chained to the dais. The lectionary, stained glass windows, and hymns connected you to others and to the faith.

Since we like to discard constraints that protect us, then go looking for them again when we realize how important they actually were, we might someday see something like the village parish again, after a devastating natural disaster, perhaps; an asteroid, say, or plague. And if it isn’t a church, it’ll function just like one, and people will go there to find hope and to cry and die.

The earliest churches read the Gospels, Epistles, and Apostolic Fathers aloud, like we might read letters from missionaries today. That’s becoming less common, but I recall as a child, before the Internet and photocopiers, hearing missionary letters read from the pulpit, so I know what that sounds like and can imagine one of those letters being from Paul or Clement or Ignatius.

c0

Sola Scriptura

Any doctrinal role of tradition is obviously incompatible with sola scriptura, one of Luther’s three solas and pillars of the Reformation still observed by most Protestants, though most Protestants probably don’t know what they are. (Learn more >)

But even Luther didn’t suggest that Church tradition was irrelevant. Quite the opposite:

“It is dangerous and terrible to hear or believe anything against the unanimous testimony of the entire holy Christian Church as held from the beginning for now over fifteen hundred years in all the world.” (Source >)

Luther also believed in the Real Presence, saying (apparently in exasperation), when questioned if he believed that the Host really truly was Jesus, "Ist, ist, ist!" (It is, it is, it is!). Lutherans use the term Sacramental Union and say Jesus is "in, with, and under" the Host, and though they treat the bread and wine as really Jesus, they don't believe the elements are converted, but rather coincide (I *think*; the issue is complicated by the fact that Lutherans themselves disagree on these matters and, indeed, you can see very different treatments of the elements among congregations).

c0

Real Presence

You can tell how sincerely Real Presence is believed by how the elements are treated after the words of institution (which in all mainstream Christian traditions are variations on Paul’s account, "Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me," etc.)

Catholic priests will consume leftover bread and wine or put it away in a tabernacle. Some is reserved for the homebound and hospitalized. Some churches preserve a wafer for what’s called Eucharistic adoration. (A place for you to pray or meditate in the presence of the uncovered Host.).

Lutherans will also consume leftovers (I saw my minister smile broadly one Sunday when he drank an obviously large amount), or discard it in a sacristy, which goes straight into the earth and isn't connected to church plumbing. Catholics also have a sacristy, but Lutheran’s have no tabernacle. And some is reserved for the homebound and hospitalized. As far as I know, Lutherans don’t practice Eucharistic adoration.

Baptists put leftovers back in the fridge or cupboard for later use.

c0

Either the elements are really Jesus or they’re really not.

As I’ve said elsewhere, Baptists and Catholics are much alike (extremes often are), even when they differ.

How so in this instance?

Either the elements are really Jesus or they’re really not. And both Catholics and Baptists comport themselves accordingly. It’s the in-between I don’t understand.

And FWIW, Catholics would agree with Baptists that Jesus isn’t in their communion service in the same way he’s in theirs, because Baptist ministers aren’t ordained by a bishop in apostolic succession.

And Baptists, for their part (if they were compelled to use the term), would regard apostolic succession as doctrinal continuity guided by the Holy Spirit and the Bible.

I like both ideas.

I'm currently ELCA Lutheran, but my heart is in Rome and my feet are in Erie, PA, in a little GARB church called Bethel Baptist, where I grew up and learned to love the Lord. It's hard to explain, but I am at home in all three, and I think that is because Jesus is in all three.

Imagine that.

[2016.08.03]

c0

"CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED by an ass"

One of the first criticisms leveled at old documents, especially ones held as authoritative, is that portions were added later, and are therefore not (as) reliable (eg, Mark 16:9-20).

This is fair if a few things are true:

1. There’s primary evidence (eg marginalia) that someone added it later; if we know who and when, we can often speculate why.

2. Those who had first-hand knowledge of the text and events were gone by the time the texts were altered. (Plutarch and those he wrote about and everyone that knew them are long gone.)

3. Those remaining wouldn't question the addition. (Despite the enormous importance of Plutarch to our understanding of prominent Romans, most high school and even college students today don’t know who Plutarch was, or Dryden for that matter. You might tell them them that 2nd century Romans wore knit caps and drank craft brews at gladiator games, and they wouldn’t bat an eye.)

4. Circumstantial evidence. Eg, certain groups or people were in the historical vicinity.

(It’s more complicated than that. I’m not a scholar. These are the ones that interest me. BTW, Dryden was a prominent poet and critic who bridged English literary traditions between Milton and Pope. Whether or not he was a good translator, I don’t know. I’ve read Pope’s translations of Homer, and they are more Pope than Homer, as his contemporaries said, but I think they’re more interesting for that. Just me.)

But there's good reason not to discount later additions:

1. Even with a decent collection of contemporaneous texts, we don't know if the spurious ones are actually the exceptions.  

2. Unlike us moderns, ancient peoples transmitted traditions orally, and much of what was eventually written down had already existed for generations. (See my post here, My mother picked the very best one (why ancient knowledge may be just what you think it is.) >

"That was added later" may actually be good evidence that the substance of the text had been living in oral tradition for generations. If so, the addition represents consensus of the community that valued and copied the stories.

Changing a Gospel (for example adding to Mark 16) would be like adding an 11th amendment to the Bill of Rights and hoping no one would notice.

As Bishop Fulton Sheen reminded me recently (via a radio rebroadcast - in fact, that's what got me thinking about this in the first place): “The Gospels did not start the Church; the Church started the Gospels. The Church did not come out of the Gospels; the Gospels came out of the Church.” Source >

(As delighted as I’d be to debate this with my Baptists brothers and sisters, I think we all agree on the events and their order, but we appeal to a quality of biblical absoluteness and independence that the Bible doesn’t even claim for itself. Which simply means that a missing biblical proof text isn’t proof that an idea isn’t doctrinally sound. You won’t find the word “Trinity” in the Bible, or a prayer of salvation.)

c0

Caveat (anticipating objections):

There's no reason why oral traditions can't be manipulated too, but I suspect it’s nearly impossible to tell that story without surviving records.

There is a lot of work that can be done with modern languages to illuminate the past - we can, for example, identify word stems in proto-Indo European that remain to this day in English, German, Greek, Hindi, Russian and hundreds more, all descended from our linguistic ancestors who lived in a region that stretched across what is now Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan.

I recall from my Linguistics days that there are performers in Turkey who can, like the ancient Greek rhapsodes, recite an entire epic over the course of hours or days, or condense it into a short story, a la Reader’s Digest. Some believe Homer was one of these performers and not the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which were doubtless orally transmitted long before they were written down.

More next time. Already written, but I shifted gears, and I’ve already overstayed my welcome.

c0

[2016.08.03]