Annotations fixed!

Okay, I figured out this morning that there was, in fact, a simple way to convert the table format of my annotation pages into a form that’s more legible in the new site theme. I just had to open each page’s edit window, copy the table into a blank word processor document, use “Convert table to text” with paragraph breaks selected as the divider, copy and paste the text back into the edit window, make whatever minor tweaks were necessary (including reloading inline images that didn’t come through right), and save. So I’ve spent the morning doing that, and I think I’ve managed to convert all the pages.

In a few cases, where I had tables nested within table cells (which didn’t translate well at all), I just reopened my original HTML files for those pages (from when I created them for my old website using an HTML editor I no longer have) and copied and pasted the tables in between paragraphs. So there are still a few small tables here and there, reasonably legible, though they could be better if this template allowed more options than “all columns equal width” or “the left column squished down to one character wide.”

I’m actually kind of glad the new template forced me to do this. I’ve thought for a while now that the old table format was less than ideal, and I’ve stopped using it in recent years, though for a while I was keeping it up on the new site for the sake of consistency. But it feels better to have all my annotation pages in a consistent format (more or less) without all the excess formatting that doesn’t translate well to different display formats. (It never occurred to me to check whether the tables were even legible on a phone screen.)

Incidentally, it finally struck me this morning why the new site theme looks familiar. It uses the same font as Patreon, and in roughly the same size. So now both my free site and my Patreon site have a similar look, which I guess is a good thing.