Re: HyperTextMarkupLanguage (html)

[nathan@cco.caltech.edu (Nathan Mates)]

In article <1994Oct31.234305.34331@cobra.uni.edu>,
 <judasclair@cobra.uni.edu> wrote:
>I am part of an organizing committee for a local Free-Net. Part of
>what I need to do is prepare documents for browsing on the WWW using
>Mosaic or Lynx. In order to do this they need to be edited to include
>HyperText Markup Language references (html references). I am looking
>for an html editor that works on the GS or other II. If you know of
>one please pass on the info.

   (Hint: 70 columns, not 79. It's much easier to quote you)

   I do all of my html hacking from with a plain text editor. (Hint:
I've got over 400K of html stuff... I know what I'm doing, and like it
that way) Just do a 'view source' (in lynx, it's '\') on documents
until you understand what all of the formatting codes are, then just
add them by hand to your documents. No worse than AppleWriter /
WordStar / WordPerfect's commands that have to be inserted in the
middle of your text. People survived many years just fine without
GUIs; not everything can be handed to you on a silver platter.

>Otherwise, any of you enterprising types out there... This is an open
>area for development! IMHO there will be an explosion of Free-Nets
>over the next few years and html editors will be in demand.  Food for
>thought!

   The problem is that html is a special language, and what you put
into a word-processor (or page-layout) style environment is not always
what you could get out of html. For example, what about 2 spaces after
a period? If you use regular text, then multiple spaces are crunched
into one. If you use preformatted stuff (<pre> & </pre>), then it
can look pretty awful on a graphical display.

   Html works in a certain way; not everything is possible. That
limitation would be extremely annoying to someone just given a
'word-processor' end, and would then complain to the author
of such word processor why he can't use say helvetica for titles,
times for text, why a line break is forced after </h#>, when it's
the limitation of html that's the cause. Word processors strive
to let people do whatever they want. Html doesn't, not without some
pretty heinous hacks.

   Html has a lot of things that do not go well with what the GS's
built-in editors can handle: pictures, internal/external links, and
the like. To be able to graphically edit those would require a totally
new word processor rewritten from scratch, and would basically have to
be a html reader/displayer. Mosaic is roughly a meg, compiled, for
unix boxes, and that doesn't include editing at all. I wish anyone
willing to do such a thing much luck, the source to mosaic/lynx, a LOT
of time, and a decent compiler.

   You're talking about everything from a lynx, or text-based, end
of the WWW. That's much simpler, but things created specifically for
a graphical viewer may look awful on a text viewer, and vice versa,
unless you're careful. I personally edit things in Emacs on a unix
box (in c-mode, not that awful html mode), using Mosaic to check
out how things look. When done, I give it a run through lynx just
to make sure things turn out right.


Nathan Mates


-- 
* Nathan Mates   http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/               *
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