Copyright © 2016 - 2021, The Green Party

The Green Party© is willing to take on new Progressive Voices. This article is NOT about content, merely the article submission process.

Directions for Article Submissions

We have an automated system for article submission. No human will see your submission until you have submitted it under these guidelines. The first step is to "apply" to become a writer. Once you're approved, our automation system will then recognize emails from you and know what of the many things it can do that you, in particular, are authorized to do! ... Here, we're primarily focused on the submission of articles, and, in particular, how you tell it to make links for you, insert images, and so forth.

Submission Email Format

The basic idea is that everything contributors do is done via email. To avoid spam and other burdens on our automation system, your editor will give you the submission email address.

As indicated elsewhere on this page, your email submission will be processed by an automated system. While a reasonably sophisticated bit of coding, its job is to save humans time, and it, of course, is not a human; it only works when your submission actually follows these guidelines. And, it will reject all inbound materials that do not match the expected pattern.

  1. The article's title is the subject line of the email; do not include any other form of indication of "subject". Also, do not include any other informaiton in the subject line, either.
  2. The email must be in "plain text only" and not in a any other format - some html may be included as described below. Use any editor you want to develop your work, but it must be submitted in a way that does not - cannot - include any formatting information. (More on this below.) In particular, sending the body of your article as an attachment will likely fail unless the material is literally in "plain text only" format.
  3. Put two blank lines between paragraphs. If you fail to do this, your submission will be one great big paragraph!
  4. Do NOT include a by-line. Rather, we'll use your known email address to match you up to our data. Just launch right into your
    article at the head of the email body.
  5. Please refrain from having any extraneous blank lines at the bottom of your article. The system will limit you to two in any event.
  6. DO NOT put a "less-than sign" ("<") as the first character of ANY line unless you're using the special tag creation features! They are described below as item 7, of course!
  7. The system will insert images and make links FOR you, as follows:
  8. Put an angle-bracket in the first character of a line ONLY to get the attention of the automation to properly create links or insert images for you. The automation system MAY be able to recognize when such use is accidental, however, best practice is to use an intentional technique to prevent use of the < character accidentally triggering the automation of image or link insertion function, such as putting a blank space at the start of the line. (It is ONLY the < character at the start of a new line of text that gets the attention of the automation system for special action in creating links for you.)

    Valid image insertion and link-creating directives allow you to easily:

     

    These features are discussed below the rest of the description of the submission system.


  9. You may put small bits of html directly into the body of the article, if you know how to do it, however refrain from putting such a link at the start of a line of email. If necessary, just add a space to move it off the first line. Your editor will not be happy with you if you put a lot of html directives in there that upset the whole page but will be delighted if you are adding things like bold and underlining and so forth.
  10. Submit your article via Email and the automation engine will take it from there. We are planning to update the engine shortly so you get an email right back either confirming your submission to the editor or explaining what went wrong and giving you a chance to fix it. For the time being, that will also be sent to the developers so they can discover if there are any bugs. Eventually, you will be given a link to your own private staging area where your as-yet unapproved articles may be found following successful submission. The automation engine will return to you a link directly to your article for verification before publication. For now, the final bit is a little more manual.

Documentation on Image Display and Link Creation Directives

These materials are arranged in what we hope is a simple order with increasing complexity. Later materials build upon the concepts and details provided earlier on. The total list isn't so daunting, though, and the software itself is amazingly forgiving. For example, while you are advised to put quotation marks around links, the software will most often figure out the author's intention without them, though for file names that include spaces (never OK in URLs, by the way), the quotations are required.

Some tips:

Attached-Image Detail & Example

Here, the author wishes to put an image into their work which they have as a file on their system. So, they attach the image to their article submission and insert a tag in their article body in the location in wich they desire it to appear.

Recall that the basic here is that you use a tag that starts a line that identifies one of the images you have attached by the integer value that represents its ordinal position. So, your first image attachment is known as <image1>, your second is <image2>, and so on. But these tags are only valid if they start a line of text! And again, you may have multiple attachments.

Recall also that you can use the same image any number of times in your article, and in any order.

Here are all the types you can display this way:

All images will be aligned right, and no option is provided for a different alignment at this time. However, an update to this is planned for the future.

Here, two images are attached and are used in reverse order and multiple times. First, an excerpt of the submitted article body:

But you know how I felt about this one, of course.
<image="big_frown.jpg"> And I was thinking I should be feeling better about it.
<image="happy_face.jpg> Yet, I didn't.
<image="big_frown.jpg">

Here's what that excerpt would look like in the resulting html - for those that know html:

But you know how I felt about this one, of course.
<a href="big_frown.jpg" align="right"></a> And I was thinking I should be feeling better about it.
<a href="happy_face.jpg" aligh="right"></a> Yet, I didn't.
<a href="big_frown.jpg" align="right"></a>

 

Standard-Link Detail & Example

Standard links have a link-text that gets highlighted as a place for people to click. They also have a URL ("web address") that points to whatever it is that's being linked at some other web site. So, in this case the author wishes to pust such a link into their article body.

The fomat for doing this is really quite simple. A simple less than sign ("angle bracket") as the first character of a line is followed by the link text, a space, an then the link URL. The automation engine will correctly format such an entry into a standard link and in the right place. The author does not have to be concerned with line-wrap and similar issues.

However, there are a few "boundary issues" that can get the automation engine in trouble and we hae easy ways of dealing with them. These are:

Note that there is no termination needed for the directive - the end of the link URL is the end of it. Either the link text or the link URL may wrap onto new lines. The automation engine will concatenate until a valid link is created or an error condition is detected.

Here, several links are employed. First, an excerpt of the submitted article body:

The quick
<brown fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_fox jumps over the
<lazy dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_quick_brown_fox_jumps
_over_the_lazy_dog
. And to see an
< image of a fox https://europeanfoxes.org/Fox_study_6.jpg or
read a discussion about this fascinating subject at <""https://GPAlameda.org"" https://GPAlameda.org just click the links!

Here's what that excerpt would look like in the resulting html - for those that know html:

The quick
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_fox">brown fox</a>
jumps over the

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_quick_brown_fox_jumps
_over_the_lazy_dog">lazy dog</a>
. And to see an

<a href="https://europeanfoxes.org/Fox_study_6.jpg">image of a fox</a> or
or read a discussion about this fascinating subject at
<a href="https://GPAlameda.org">"https://GPAlameda.org"</a> just click the links!

Here's what that excerpt would look like in a web browser:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. And to see an image of a fox or read a discussion about this fascinating subject at "https://GPAlameda.org" just click the links!

Here we have four links and illustrate how the author touches on some of the boundary conditions that need a little attention. The first is just a standard link but the author uses some of the additional space on the same line after the link. The second link is a standard link that wraps around a line. The third link uses the word "image" at the start of a link's text, and the fourth illustrates the use of double-double-quotes.

Non-Image Attachment Detail & Example


Non-image attachments - that are not links to other sites - are typically used to share specially formatted documents such as PDFs. The automation engine treats them very similarly to standard links with a few similarities to how image attachments are processed.

These attachments have the same basic "boundary issues" that standard links have, for identical reasons, so the implemented solutions are identical. These are:

As with standard links, note that there is no termination needed for the directive - the end of the attachment directive is the end of it. The link text may wrap onto new lines but as with the <image directive, the <attachmentx> directive may not! The automation engine will concatenate until a valid directive is supplied or an error condition is detected.

Here, the author has attached public court documents in PDF format he wants to make available to readers - it is the first non-image attachment and was attached with filename hedges_v_brown.pdf. First, an excerpt of the submitted article body:

Here you can find a PDF file containing
<the Hedges lawsuit <attachment="hedges_v_brown.pdf">.

Here's what that excerpt would look like in the resulting html - for those that know html:

Here you can find a PDF file containing
<a href="hedges_v_brown.pdf">the hedges lawsuit</a>.

Here's what that excerpt would look like in a web browser:

Here you can find a PDF file containing the Hedges lawsuit.

Be sure to look at the details under standard links where the boundary conditions are covered.

Displaying a Non-Attached ("remote") Image Detail and Example

Images "sell" articles to the public. One very powerful technique is to display an image on your web page that is hosted by someone else. You do run the risk that the other party will change the link, but this doesn't happen that often. And, so long as they're attribution, it's a fine thing to do.

The directive to have the automation engine display your engine differs only slightly from having it display an attached image. Having such images displayed only requires that you indicate where you want the image (by the placement of the directive), and then what the URL for the image is. This is done with a varriant of the <image directive. Instead of giving an integer to indicate which attached image is desired, merely a space followed by a URL is all that's needed. It shares the same wrapping and termination characteristics with all the other directives that take a URL - excep that there's no link text - so please see these details above.

Here, the author has attached public court documents in PDF format he wants to make available to readers - it is the first non-image attachment and was attached with filename hedges_v_brown.pdf. First, an excerpt of the submitted article body:

The "reporters" at MSM took this image at right
<image http://MSM.com/story/LieOfTheDay.jpg and expect us to
believe that soldier didn't just kill that little boy.

Here's what that excerpt would look like in the resulting html - for those that know html:

The "reporters" at MSM took this image at right
<img src="http://MSM.com/story/LieOfTheDay.jpg" align="right"></a> and expect us to
believe that soldier didn't just kill that little boy.

 

 

Please send questions or feedback to: Editor at GPAlameda.org