SIGNIFICANT BITS—August 2009

by Sean N. Henderson

EDITING FOR FUN AND PROFIT

Computers are great for editing nearly anything.  Many people just starting out with computers, or others that feel intimidated about computers, may not realize how to go about the process of editing words, images, sounds and other items.  If this is you, read on and learn how to edit anything!

FILE HANDLING

Everything on a computer is a file.  So here are some tips about "handling" files.

1. Do not put spaces in file names.

Windows will let you do it, and encourages it, but this is a failing of Windows.  Learn to use the underscore and or dash.  For instance, someband_some-song-title_track9.mp3 or some-org_some-document_20090115.html.

2. Before doing anything, make a dated or numbered copy of the file first.

This is not such a big deal if the file is received as
an attachment in an email, but still a good idea.  Using a date in
the format of yyyymmdd and or yyyymmdd_hhmm makes files sortable in
the directory listing.  This is helpful also if the directory is seen
remotely by way of FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or otherwise.  This is also helpful for where file details are not available.

3. Turn on filename extensions in the folder views in Windows.

One of Microsoft's more dumbfounding defaults.  Ever see two files with the same name, but different icons?  That is likely because in Windows the option not to show the filename extensions is selected.  It is hard to think why anyone would want to know only part of a filename.  Make sure filename extensions are turned on.

I prefer seeing directories (folders) in Windows or otherwise in "Details" view, and all system files visible.

FORMATTING

Some of you might be involved in maintaining a website, or sending out HTML email for an announcement.

4. Use a competent text editor for markup.

If editing markup (HTML, CFML, XML, or any "ML"), you may be tempted to use a WYSIWYG editor, or a full blown "Integrated Developer Environment"   or IDE.  It is not necessary.  Neither do you need to use MS Word or OpenOffice or any other office suite's word processor.  Just use a good text editor with syntax highlighting, and indent your code properly using tabs not spaces.

You will want to choose an editor that can edit "rectangles" à la Emacs on UNIX.  A good text editor for Windows is Crimson Editor, but there are many others.  UNIX has three very good editors - Emacs, Vi (Vim) and Pico (installed with (Al)Pine).  There is a stand-alone version of Pico called Nano, that is good also.  Emacs is probably the best editor ever written, but the Windows port is not an exact replacement and doesn't "sit well under the fingers".

While .rtf (Rich Text Files) are lightweight, they are not universally
viewable outside of Windows, so avoid saving files in that file type.

4.1. Use CSS or your word processor's spacing features for spacing paragraphs.

If using a word processor, adjust the before-and-after spacing.  If
editing HTML, use CSS (in-line or otherwise) to adjust the
before-and-after spacing, or use a BR tag or two.  The trend in HTML is to use tables for tabular data, and to use paragraph marks for paragraphs, and neither of these for spacing or layout.

HUMAN FACTOR

5. Learn to type.

This cannot be stressed enough.  People say they are
not good at computers, but most of the time the barrier appears to be that these people never took the time to learn how to type well or navigate their machine without the mouse.  Try not using the mouse and maybe even using "the prompt".  To this day I still have at least one "prompt" or "shell" open each session.  To get to the prompt in Windows,  type 'Win + R + cmd(Return)' (without quotes and where Win is the Windows key).  If you do not like the current prompt, you can try something like 'prompt $P$_$+$G(return)' (without quotes) to get something more friendly.  To exit a prompt, type 'exit'.

6. Learn the keyboard shortcuts (a.k.a. hot keys) for the editor you are
using.

For instance, in Windows and using MS Excel, there should rarely
be a reason to touch the mouse.  Excel can be regularly navigated
by keyboard shortcuts for 95% of tasks.  Your left pinky should be
capable of jamming on the tab button repeatedly to move through links on
websites or cells in a spreadsheet, options in dialog menus, or
whatever.  Shift-tab generally does the same thing except go the reverse
direction.

The idea here is that the more often you have to move your hands from keyboard to mouse and back, the slower the pace of editing is going to be.

7. Think about hand position for your chosen editor.

For the Emacs text editor I have found that the traditional "home" position (level knuckles parallel to the row, index fingers resting lightly on the f and j keys) on the keyboard were not as efficient as having my knuckles angled towards my body.  Meaning my left pinky resting on the Escape key (above the tilde), my left thumb resting on the alt key, and the right hand a mirror of that.

Laptops will mess up correct hand position or whatever hand position you were used to before you got a laptop (assuming a laptop was not your first machine).  There is no standard, really, when it comes to keyboard layout on laptops, so find one that works for you.  For myself, I need a wide backspace key and the control keys on the outside on the bottom row.  Having the Function (Fn) key on the outside of the lowest row tests my hand positioning and accuracy, not to mention my mentality.

FILES AND FILE FORMATS

8. Choose the right file format.

I like to choose the most basic file type I can.  Often this is a plain text file (.txt, .html, .csv).  If I have a spreadsheet project with just one sheet and mostly numbers, I will save it as a .csv or .tab file, which is a plain text file with a different filename extension and either a comma (.csv) or tab character (.tab) used as a field delimiter (separator).  These types of files can be brought into more elaborate files later.

The same goes for writing.  Try starting with plain text, or  HTML,
and move up to MS Word, MS PowerPoint or OpenOffice files as needed.
Choosing the lowest tech file-type keeps things portable, small, and
lightweight.  Plus, plain-text files are less prone to viruses than
binary files like .doc, .xls, and others.

For image editing, if starting with a .jpg or .gif file, use MS Paint to
save it as a .bmp before making any changes.  Repeatedly saving over
.jpg and .gif files will just degrade the image to a mess.  Note that
exporting a .bmp to a .jpg or .gif from MS Paint may introduce some
color reduction, depending on the nature of the original file, and the
version of Windows/MS Paint used.

Lastly, some types of files are "project" files, and contain other data besides the actual item you are working on.  For audio, Audacity uses project files.  For images, programs like GIMP and Photoshop use project files.  What this means is that the final output file types (.mp3, .jpg) will be different than the working file type (.aup, .psd).

Hope this helps.  Happy editing!

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