Mdesc alignment config

[Incognito]

I've seen a few PCs over the years with a perfectly aligned mdesc - a perfect rectangle of text, so to speak.

I was wondering what template one could use, to create mdescs offline, to achieve this - purely out of curiousity.

[Feco]

Notepad++ has a setting for a vertical line marker.  That's what I use to format everything.

[ChibiTama]

You can use one of these two online tools to wordwrap text for you. The character limit for Armageddon is 80. I hope this helps.

http://tools.zenverse.net/word-wrap/
http://appincredible.com/online/word-wrap/

[Incognito]

You can use one of these two online tools to wordwrap text for you. The character limit for Armageddon is 80. I hope this helps.

http://tools.zenverse.net/word-wrap/
http://appincredible.com/online/word-wrap/

Thank you - just what I was looking for.

[Marauder Moe]

Don't do it. Ragged right hand margins have been shown to increase reading comprehension.

[Lizzie]

Don't do it. Ragged right hand margins have been shown to increase reading comprehension.

Perfect left and right edges are called "justified margins." It looks clunky with certain fonts, and even with lines that have long words. Sometimes the word won't squeeze onto a line, and has to drop to the next line. So the line above stretches out and it looks as though there are 3 spaces between each word. That's what a justified margin does, unless you don't mind generous usage of hyphens.

[Exen44]

I use the Armageddon tools thing for characters that's somewhere on this forum. Isn't perfect, but it's pretty nice.

[Bushranger]

Don't do it. Ragged right hand margins have been shown to increase reading comprehension.

Perfect left and right edges are called "justified margins." It looks clunky with certain fonts, and even with lines that have long words. Sometimes the word won't squeeze onto a line, and has to drop to the next line. So the line above stretches out and it looks as though there are 3 spaces between each word. That's what a justified margin does, unless you don't mind generous usage of hyphens.

This is somewhat incorrect Lizzie. People do not use justified margins to have a perfect rectangle of text for their Mdesc as you can not set that for other people on a mud just as you can not select which font people use. To create a description which is a neat rectangle you need to do these things.

1. Use a fixed width (monospaced) font.
Have you noticed that the Mantis Head looks wonky or weird when you log on to Armageddon? That is because the font you are using is not monospaced. ASCII art always assumed a fixed width font where every character is exactly the same width. Try setting your font to something like FixedSys, Courier, Courier New, Monaco - these are the correct fonts to play a mud with so ASCII art, maps and formatting looks correct.

2. Pick a character count.
Incognito is correct the character limit for Armageddon is 80 so it might word-wrap automatically after this depending upon your client and client settings. I generally pick something a little shorter like 75-79 depending upon the first line of my MDesc. If you rely upon the inbuilt text editor auto formatting your entry however you need to note that there will be a 1 space indent on the first line of your mdesc and 2 spaces after each full stop (period). It will also try to fill each 80 character line with 80 characters where it can so I tend not to format my mdesc with the inbuilt text editor and that means going back afterwards and entering it again because the first time you hit ~ in character generation it will automatically be formatted.

3. Choose your words carefully.
After that it is simply a matter of selecting your words and phrasing carefully so that you end up with the same. You might want to use cerulean for your eye colour but only blue will fit the line length or you might have to add something about your eyebrows and move the eye colour to the next line so that you can fit cerulean into the mdesc you want formatted in a neat rectangle. I first started making my MDesc's neatly justified as a writing exercise to make me put more careful thought into the selection of words and phrases. I have recently forced myself out of this habit because every character was being formatted like this!

Here are an example of Boaz, the barbarous, blue-inked dwarf. First in courier where it is a neat rectangle and then in Ariel where it is not because it is a proportional font.

Blue-inked tattoos adorn the head, face and shoulders of this dwarven male with
an intricate mosaic of lines and symbols. Lending a barbaric tone to his tribal
body art is the addition of ritual scarification to the tattoos; short vertical
lines cut into his bronzed skin close together that run in succession along his
cheeks from one pointed ear to the other, the parade broken only by his bulbous
nose. An amber pair of eyes gleam rapaciously from their place within the mixed
pattern of tattoos and scars that define his barbaric visage. Broad-shouldered,
this dwarf holds a physique that is fairly typical for one of his kind standing
almost as wide as he is tall. Sinewy limbs display the ropelike muscles that he
has coiled about his bones; muscles that propel him with a grace uncommon among
his brethren dwarves.

Blue-inked tattoos adorn the head, face and shoulders of this dwarven male with
an intricate mosaic of lines and symbols. Lending a barbaric tone to his tribal
body art is the addition of ritual scarification to the tattoos; short vertical
lines cut into his bronzed skin close together that run in succession along his
cheeks from one pointed ear to the other, the parade broken only by his bulbous
nose. An amber pair of eyes gleam rapaciously from their place within the mixed
pattern of tattoos and scars that define his barbaric visage. Broad-shouldered,
this dwarf holds a physique that is fairly typical for one of his kind standing
almost as wide as he is tall. Sinewy limbs display the ropelike muscles that he
has coiled about his bones; muscles that propel him with a grace uncommon among
his brethren dwarves.

[azuriolinist]

That's one way of having a neat rectangle. Sounds like a lot more energy expending than it has to be.

You can also expand the spaces between the words of each line so that the text block has straight edges. That's justifying the text, as Lizzie said. In Linux, per say, there's a command line utility par that can justify text by number of characters.

Taking the first mdesc from the Sample Descriptions page for an example, here's the description justified to 79 characters:

Code Select Expand

> cat desc.txt | par w79 j1
The woman before  you is slim, with  slender, long legs, and  gangly, thin arms
that hang from her narrow shoulders. Her stomach is well muscled, leading up to
a thin  neck that supports  an oval, smooth face.  She has sparkling  blue eyes
that rest above a petite nose, which  is smattered with freckles. She has thin,
deep  red lips  that rest  between two  slight dimples.  She has  a thin,  well
rounded chin, and rosy cheeks. This face is framed by fiery-red hair that hangs
down to her shoulders in small curls.

Not sure if there are any online tools that can do the same, though. Word processors don't actually add hard spaces when justifying text, so trying to justify text on Word wouldn't work.

[Bushranger]

Yes but then you have weird spacing between the words that are both grammatically and stylistically wrong and have no place in collectively written fiction. Refer to any style guide such as "The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law" or "Fowler's Modern English Usage" or "Style Manual: For Authors, Editors and Printers". Why not just spell Blue as Blu because you need to save a space or spell it Bahlooue? The Linux command line utility par also still relies upon monospaced fonts being used. An MDesc with random extra spaces thrown in should be formatted by the approving staff to remove them or rejected.

Don't do it. Ragged right hand margins have been shown to increase reading comprehension.

Also this. It's shown to increase reading comprehension because you don't have people randomly inserting spaces to artificially justify text.


Edit:
Let me clarify that artificially justifying text is fine for things like advertising material or short snippets. Yes there are reasons that it exists. Armageddon is pages and pages and pages of text that has it's own formatting and style guidelines. Having occasional MDescs interrupt it with weirdly written sentences just so it's justified makes it look terribly awkward.

[azuriolinist]

I can agree with you, there. It's not easy on the eyes.

I guess it's a way of emulating justified text, albeit a lousy one.

[FantasyWriter]

I use to do this a lot. It was a very good, productive writing challenge for me. Adding random spaces is cheating, challenge yourself and give it a try.

[BadSkeelz]

I can almost guarantee that I would never read a mdesc formatted like that. So maybe this is a good meta pick for a criminal character.

[FantasyWriter]

OCD is a bitch she-tok.

[Dar]

I once wrote a character with a perfectly square mdesc and bragged about it to Shalooonsh.


Shalooonsh response was," I ... see. Well. it's good to have goals."

[chrisdcoulombe]

Just use .f to format it.