Re: HyperTextMarkupLanguage (html)

[dempson@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <Cyo3zM.Ksp@ssbunews.ih.att.com>,
J. L. Walters <bird@nwsrs.nw.att.com> wrote:
> > I would think you could create a perfectly good html editor within
> > Ultramacros. I'll attempt this before the end of the month...
> 
> What are the requirements for html?

I assume you mean "...for editing HTML".

The language itself is pretty straightforward.  It is a text file with
embedded commands for doing things like marking the end of a
paragraph, styles, lists, etc.  This sort of information could be
dealt with quite easily by existing editors (but it wouldn't look
quite like the output produces by Lynx, Mosaic and other HTML viewers
- see other messages in this thread).

The hard part is the graphics and the links.  A graphic is included as
a reference to another file (usually in GIF format).  A link is a
marked region of text that has a reference to another file, another
portion of the same document, or a universal resource locator (URL)
referring to a file, HTML page, news group, mail address, etc. which
may be anywhere on Internet.

As an example, here is the exact text that appears in an HTML document
for a link to Brian Tao's Apple II home page.

<a href="http://www.io.org/computers/apple2";>The Internex
Online Apple II Library Home Page</a>

The "<a" and "</a>" mark the beginning and end of the anchor (link).
the "href=...>" part is a URL to the HTML document (or an alias of it)
on another site.  The text after this is what actually appears when
you view the document ("The Internex Online Apple II Library Home
Page"), which is underlined in most HTML viewers.  If you move the
cursor to it, it will be highlighted and you can activate it to go to
the selected HTML document.

The user doesn't need to know the name of the document, only how to
find a link to get there.


Editing this in a "pretty" (GUI) fashion could be tricky.  Ideally,
you want some kind of highlighting on the link, and when you click on
the link, it should show what type of link it is, and the destination.

I haven't seen existing graphical HTML editors, so I don't know how
they represent the links.
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand