My first attempt to start a research-related blog...

[fpb]

...has been an utter demoralizing failure. Either I don't understand Blogger software, or it is no damn good for anything a bit text-heavy. I completely lost two days' hard work. It was a bloody good article, too, and to rewrite anything a second time is, to me, an agonizing experience.

Comments

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

Don't you write in a text editor and save the file first?

Rather than a blog, you might consider something like scribd (http://www.scribd.com/) for academic articles.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Unless I missed something, it appears that you cannot import copied text into Blogger. I tried twice to import the first few verses of the Odyssey before I had to decide to type them in.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

Hmm. What do you mean by "import"? As far as I know there's no option to directly upload a word document or anything like that.

Have you tried simply pasting copied text into Blogger's text area? I just tried that from OpenOffice, and it worked for me -- including formatting.

As unreliable as your Internet connection is, I don't think Blogger's autosave can be trusted. Offline composition is your best option, and I'm certain we can get it to work for you.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

"Pasting copied text" is exactly what I tried. It did not work.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

It does seem to work in general, so we should probably figure out the particulars of your case which prevented it from working. First of all, what was the originating application for the text, and which browser were you using?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It originated from the Gutenberg.org website, and I was using Internet Explorer.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. You might want to try Firefox or Chrome. I wouldn't expect it to work with Internet explorer.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

That is, I wouldn't expect pasting of formatted text in the Blogger rich editor widget to work. It does some fancy things which I wouldn't expect Internet Explorer to be able to support well.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I haven't been using Firefox since I found that it would not allow me to open zipped downloaded software, but only to save it. However, I'll try - once I have the time, and the nervous strength to try and rewrite the lost article. The main problem is simply this: that I find trying to rewrite material from the start a nerve-shredding experience.

[kikei.livejournal.com]

I second the text-editor comment (although I do tend to write directly into lj's web interface because I'm always somewhere). I don't know much about Blogger myself but I would hope they have an autosave feature, much in the way of lj, so you don't lose absolutely everything.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The autosave feature failed early on, and nothing I could do could restore it. I was unable to save the draft to my own memories, either. Now I have a prettily formatted copy of the first paragraph I wrote.