Posted by Jonah on July 13, 2101 at 07:35:11:

In Reply to: Re: Getting started on tagging. posted by Alex Christian on July 10, 2101 at 04:54:55:

After doing a compilation, Alex wrote to me:
"I did the whole thing by hand which was useful for learning but somewhat time consuming. I'll have to get a programme to do some of the work."

My response might be of use to others, since I give some of my own time-saving tips.

1. Switch to the dvorak keyboard layout. The Qwerty layout was, as you might know, intentionally designed to be as slow as possible to prevent the early typewriters from jamming. The dvorak layout will double anyone's typing speed, reduce errors, and completely prevent physical strain.

2. I use a couple text-insert programs, in which I type just a unique phrase and the program does the rest. For example, to type the entire phrase "<div align=right><small></small></div><hr width=200 size=1 noshade align=right><br>" I type just the first three characters. You can set this up in Word under, I think, "AutoCorrect" or "AutoInsert," it might be called. I use these auto inserts for long phrases (like the above, or sets of links) plus for cumbersome-to-type things like <blockquote> or <font face=sanserif>

3. Be creative with search-and-replace. For example, to strip out the false line breaks from something you get from email but preserve the intended line breaks, assuming the latter are indicated by two entire white spaces, I do the following:
   
   
   1. I search-and-replace the double line breaks (i.e., the real ones), taking out the breaks (indicated in Word by "^p^p") and replacing with something unique, like "@#."

   2. I search-and-replace the single line breaks. I replace every break "^p" with a single space mark " ".

   3. Finally I replace the real line breaks, replacing "@#" with "^p^p<br><br>." Thus, in three short steps, I've stripped out all the false line breaks and replaced all the true, intended breaks with the appropriate code. The whole process would have taken about 20 seconds using keyboard shortcuts.

   4. Having said that, there are always unique circumstances requiring real attention. In the above, for example, I was assuming that every single line break in an email that you're converting for the web was not a real break, and only the double breaks needed to be coded. But there could be places where a single break was supposed to be a single break, like if the document contained an outline list.

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