This post, Reader, deals with the pressing of clay. The actual pressing; the placing of story into tablet/slate form, using the stylus you know as CSS.
Erra's Throne—as you know, Reader—is native to this format. The 'digital' format; it is designed for consumption on tablets and slates, on handheld devices of diverse form and preference.
Your humble scribe has assayed, therefore, to learn this "CSS" to the best of his (extremely limited) ability. This being essential to the practical craft of conveying the story of warrior Emmy, Richard her vanguard, and the diverse many others of whom the tale tells.
One of the first pieces of wisdom that one gleans, undertaking this, is that too much prescription from the scribe herself is bad, in this context. Meaning with respect to how the text is styled and presented to you, the Reader. Because one of the delights of our tablets, our slates, is that they allow the reading experience to be customized. The Reader can make the text bigger or smaller; a black or white background (or Sepia, or...green!); a different typeface. All of this is for the good and
in the words themselves
, as you begin to investigate how to customize and create with scribe gleaned as he assayed the task
they caution you not to set things — font types, sizes, colors — but rather to scale relative preferences
immediately on-board for sizes and, 95% of the time, font (no prescription of regular)
but color!
so, fades
exhaustive!
tried to automate it with CSS gradient functions but they broke in various ways
so, did it that way
so…after 2.5 years
takes the Lizard to make me aware of inversion issue
i.e., that for some appreciable % of readers this way of doing fades has never worked
doesn't work in inversion; white text (what the "fade" faded to or from)…well, it shows up quite clearly on black, does it not?
so these lines do an even crazier thing, cuz they don't invert, they like bottom out and snap back, cuz as it goes to the greys it actually gets more obscure (against black bckgd, remember) THEN snaps to default.
l
o
l
so, quickly figured out a thing that worked: opacity
a manual opacity gradient worked on both Android and iOS devices, against all backgrounds (white, black, sepia, green)
but: remember above how i'd tried to automate this earlier, or at least make it cleaner and less labor-intensive in re: coding? the goal being to find something where i don't have to style code every single letter but rather can apply a gradient effect to a field
well, i have gotten a bit better at CSS
i could do it, now!
but: could use linear gradient? faster?
no, because linear gradient is for color, and that's the point — any set color distinction gets screwed up by user preference, inversion, etc.
the projectionist has final cut
BUT! tricksy way found used online in a few places (that i did not, of course, invent; magpie raven scouring the flow for gems glinting in the currents, snatching them up with gratitude)
allowed gradient for opacity (actually, 'transparency' was the operator, but…)
but…
not using it!
still not sure why but
main problem was: perhaps because cleverly applied a background block into text, it didn't break like text; it got messed up
i like messing up line breaks (white-space:nowrap!)
but only when that's the point
these were actually particularly bad lines to further obscure in this way
secondary problem, equally disqualifying: actually did the same thing in Android (not iOS); on black, full text was visible just plain, i.e. the whole phrase that was meant to be faded into or out of was just there, white-text plain and fully visible, no effect
so…opacity it is
codin' EACH LETTER.
before you ask: i realized, three years ago, that the smart way to do this (the CSS stuff) would be to be mindful of up-front time investments that felt like they were delaying writing but were in fact timesavers because they would spare me having to, for instance, style code each letter for fade sequences.
and i have found many such things!
i have even overcome my double reticence to do this, because i quite enjoy tinkering around with and learning the css style coding stuff, so it's a high risk of becoming a form of semi-justified procrastination
but i powered through all that and have put in work!
just…well i mean, look. i never said i was good @ this stuff.
Erra's Throne—as you know, Reader—is native to this format. The 'digital' format; it is designed for consumption on tablets and slates, on handheld devices of diverse form and preference.
Your humble scribe has assayed, therefore, to learn this "CSS" to the best of his (extremely limited) ability. This being essential to the practical craft of conveying the story of warrior Emmy, Richard her vanguard, and the diverse many others of whom the tale tells.
One of the first pieces of wisdom that one gleans, undertaking this, is that too much prescription from the scribe herself is bad, in this context. Meaning with respect to how the text is styled and presented to you, the Reader. Because one of the delights of our tablets, our slates, is that they allow the reading experience to be customized. The Reader can make the text bigger or smaller; a black or white background (or Sepia, or...green!); a different typeface. All of this is for the good and
in the words themselves
, as you begin to investigate how to customize and create with scribe gleaned as he assayed the task
they caution you not to set things — font types, sizes, colors — but rather to scale relative preferences
immediately on-board for sizes and, 95% of the time, font (no prescription of regular)
but color!
so, fades
exhaustive!
tried to automate it with CSS gradient functions but they broke in various ways
so, did it that way
so…after 2.5 years
takes the Lizard to make me aware of inversion issue
i.e., that for some appreciable % of readers this way of doing fades has never worked
doesn't work in inversion; white text (what the "fade" faded to or from)…well, it shows up quite clearly on black, does it not?
so these lines do an even crazier thing, cuz they don't invert, they like bottom out and snap back, cuz as it goes to the greys it actually gets more obscure (against black bckgd, remember) THEN snaps to default.
l
o
l
so, quickly figured out a thing that worked: opacity
a manual opacity gradient worked on both Android and iOS devices, against all backgrounds (white, black, sepia, green)
but: remember above how i'd tried to automate this earlier, or at least make it cleaner and less labor-intensive in re: coding? the goal being to find something where i don't have to style code every single letter but rather can apply a gradient effect to a field
well, i have gotten a bit better at CSS
i could do it, now!
but: could use linear gradient? faster?
no, because linear gradient is for color, and that's the point — any set color distinction gets screwed up by user preference, inversion, etc.
the projectionist has final cut
BUT! tricksy way found used online in a few places (that i did not, of course, invent; magpie raven scouring the flow for gems glinting in the currents, snatching them up with gratitude)
allowed gradient for opacity (actually, 'transparency' was the operator, but…)
but…
not using it!
still not sure why but
main problem was: perhaps because cleverly applied a background block into text, it didn't break like text; it got messed up
i like messing up line breaks (white-space:nowrap!)
but only when that's the point
these were actually particularly bad lines to further obscure in this way
secondary problem, equally disqualifying: actually did the same thing in Android (not iOS); on black, full text was visible just plain, i.e. the whole phrase that was meant to be faded into or out of was just there, white-text plain and fully visible, no effect
so…opacity it is
codin' EACH LETTER.
before you ask: i realized, three years ago, that the smart way to do this (the CSS stuff) would be to be mindful of up-front time investments that felt like they were delaying writing but were in fact timesavers because they would spare me having to, for instance, style code each letter for fade sequences.
and i have found many such things!
i have even overcome my double reticence to do this, because i quite enjoy tinkering around with and learning the css style coding stuff, so it's a high risk of becoming a form of semi-justified procrastination
but i powered through all that and have put in work!
just…well i mean, look. i never said i was good @ this stuff.