Fixing Black Tags in BBCode.

OK, here's a little something for editing. Now, as you probably know, FIMFiction.net uses BBCode for submitting stories. Yes, one could use Google Drive, but I could never get it to work, so I usually use LibreOffice Writer to make a new HTML document and type up my fic there, then save the HTML file and use the source code (open the HTML doc with a simple, Notepad-like text editor) and paste the source to the HTML to BBCode conversion tool at Skeena.net.

One of the chapters of Dream a Little Dream, however, had an interesting code glitch I missed because I see fics in light mode. Apparently, the black code was inserted into the story, making the text black regardless of what mode you were seeing it in.

Now, how do you undo this? It's actually simple. The secret is finding and removing this code:

color=#000000

Now the code will be in brackets in the story, so keep that in mind. So how do we get rid of that? Simple. Open up a new document LibreOffice and switch to Web Layout, then paste the BBCode of your story, in its entirety, onto the page. You're going to want to use the Find and Replace function, under the edit pull-down menu. Put the BBCode above, including the brackets, into the "Find" line, and leave the replace line blank. Then select "Replace all." LibreOffice should automatically delete all instances of the code, fixing your fic. Don't worry about the /color tags left behind, they're quite harmless. That done, copy the new version and replace it in the story editing page here in FIM, and you have a story free of that hilariously awful code.

Hopefully that helps other fanfic writers. And in the meantime, if anyone knows a good plugin or something for LibreOffice that can do the conversion to BBCode on its own, I'd appreciate it.