November 2006 Archives

Here's a random news post that explains just about what's wrong with the world today.

"Elderly harmonica player arrested for performing copyrighted songs at bar..."

Here's the great point on why I'm so inclined to write and draw, rather than focusing on other forms of art. Aside of the obvious fact that the other forms of art are more difficult.

Copyright paranoia. Plain and simple.

I write because that means less copyright hassle.

I was once an avid photographer. Now I'm no longer doing that actively, because there are risks.

I can't photograph people. People have rights. I can no longer photograph buildings. Architects have rights. I can't photograph animals - phorographing pets needs owner's permission, apparently zoo owners have rights too.

I suppose I should go to the woods and snap pictures of real wild animals. Nature, it appears, isn't copyrighted, and it's apparently allowed to photograph even on private land as long as photography doesn't damage the surroundings...

And music? Music is really messed up. All music ever made has been composed. You can't make any more music without exposing yourself to liability. Sure you can compose stuff, but wait until someone else's lawyer comes around.

And don't even think of making movies. All of the copyright problems of photography, music, and sound recording rolled into one giant ball of trouble.

So why do I write? I believe creative written word is the most resistant thing we have here. Even when you can be influenced by someone's work, crying for plagiarism needs strong proof, which at the same time extremely simple to prove. And why would anyone "plagiarise" anyway? Written word is the most versatile of the mediums, bounded only by the imagination of the author and the limits of philosophy.

Some people believe the society is at the brink of collapsing. In digital media, we have deliberately added planned obsolescence, built right into the system. Current content providers are deliberately trying to keep art from the hands of the consumers. Yet, if you look at things, you see that written word is what has persisted over millennia. Ebooks with their DRM won't catch on; libraries, full of their plain old ordinary paper pages, will stand for millennia.

So this is why I write. This is why I draw stuff. This is why I oppose DRM. This is why I'm worried. In distant future, it may be that no one remembers what happened in 2000-2010, except that they made some good books.

And heck, what I said was probably said better by someone else. But this is just me, telling how I feel about the issues. I happen to agree with whoever posted this stuff before, a bit more eloquently. I'm not plagiarising it, just agreeing with it. =)

Okay... I know one thing: LaTeX2e isn't meant for manuscripts. It's good for getting good results on book formatting, but getting properly formatted manuscripts out is difficult. I'm playing with the manuscript formatting guidelines provided by SFWA.

First, LaTeX2e isn't fun for people who demand exact formatting. Exact as in "these margins". (Margins can be arranged... somewhat). Exact as in "that particular cover page". (Eh... this can almost be arranged.)

But the part where LaTeX2e seems to fail most spectacularly is "This particular font". Courier. Yeah, TeX has Courier. Everyone has Courier. But then these people want "these margins" and throw in "we want ragged right, too, good heavens, not justified".

The rubber raft gets squeaking violently. LaTeX2e handles Courier. It tries its best to do the margins. But if you try "ragged right and these margins and Courier too", weird stuff starts to happen.

Also, LaTeX2e makes it a bit non-straightforward to write new document styles, the easiest way seems to be \input my styles. Hmm...

So what the heck should I do?

I kept thinking of "hey, a low-tech solution: Toss LaTeX and try Troff." The problem with Troff being that I'm not at all familiar on where to get documentation. I hope the GNU Groff documentation is worth a try.

Second guess would be Lout. I used this typesetter a while ago on a game project, and it seemed just fine as long as your requirements were simple - and heck, manuscript formatting requirements are epitome of simplicity. Perhaps I could try that again...

Timelines are difficult to manage.

Basically, the problem is this: I have, on the MediaWiki, a giant timeline thing. It lists stuff in an easy format: Year, date, event.

Doesn't make things much easier from user's point of view though...

Wouldn't it be neat if I had a database of different events, which got then pushed to the wiki formatted properly... and would also update specific characters' timelines, specific country's timelines, notable events in a specific city, etc. It would also work with different calendar systems, named eras...

Heck, it's just a matter of throwing a bit of Rails stuff out, right?

Right now I just have to figure out how to make Ruby interface nicely with the MediaWiki API...