HTML Editor for the Macintosh

Copyright 1994, Rick Giles

Contents

Introduction

HTML Editor is a semi-WYSIWYG editor for an HTML document. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a coding system for specifying the format of a text document, and for creating hypertext links between a document and other documents that accessible on the same computer or through the World Wide Web (WWW). For more information on HTML, click here.

The location of a document that is liked to another is specified with a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). For more information on URLs, click here.

Requirements

HTML Editor requires:

Features

The following features are supported by HTML Editor:

Using HTML Editor

In addition to the usual functionality of a simple text editor, HTML Editor provides functions for working with HTML tags in a text document.

The toolbar of each document window has popup menus and buttons for tagging selected text, switching to Mosaic, restyling the document, and hiding all tags for a preview of the document.

Tags

Selected text is tagged by chosing a tag operation.

Popup Menus

The Heading popup menu provides the six standard HTML Heading tags. Tag text for Emphasis, Stronger, Directive, Output, Keyboard, Definition, and Citation HTML logical styles by chosing from the Style popup menu. Tag a list by chosing a Definition list, Directory list, Menu list, or Unordered list from the List popup menu. Use the Text popup menu to tag text as a Comment, Listing, Preformatted text, or a Quote.

Title

To tag the selected text as the title of the HTML document, click the Title button.

Paragraph Break

To add a paragraph break tag to the document, click the Paragraph Break button .

Styles

To tag the selected text as bold, italics, underline, or typewriter style, click the appropriate of the Style button.

Anchor

To construct a hypertext link with the Anchor Dialog, click the Anchor button. The Anchor Dialog provides a choice of three types of References.

To mark the selected text of the document as an HTML target, chose the Target radio button and entering the name of the target in the edit text box. Then click OK.

To create a link to a named target in the current document, choose the Link in this file radio button, enter the name of the target, and click OK.

To create a link to another document, choose the Link to another file radio button, enter the URL for the the file, and click OK. Choosing this radio button enables the Construct button, and clicking on this button allows you to construct the URL to the file as either a URL relative to a root directory, or a complete path.

The root directory for relative URLs is specified in the Preferences Dialog. Clicking the Relative... button or the Complete... button opens a standard file dialog from which you select the linked, local file.

If you clicked the Relative... button, then there is a check that the selected file is actually in the root directory or one of its subdirectories. If so, then the URL for the file is the name of the path from the root directory to the selected path. If not, then there is a warning, and you may abandon the operation, or apply the complete path name to the file's URL.

The scheme for a document's URL can be selected from the Scheme popup menu.

Image

Insert the HTML tag for an in-line image by clicking the Image button.

As with anchors, construct the URL for a local file by clicking the Relative... or Complete... button.

Address

Tag the selected text as an address by clicking the Address button.

Browser

To switch to NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh or MacWeb, click the Browser button. The browser application must be available for launching on you machine, or it must be already running. If you switch to Mosaic version 2.0 or greater, or to MacWeb, then the browser opens a window for browsing the current document.

Restyle

Restyling a document applies the tags that are currently in the documents and updates the display of the document. To restyle the document, click the Restyle button.

Hide/Show Tags

To preview the document without tags, click the Hide Tags button. When the tags are hidden, you can select and copy text, but you cannot edit the text. To return to editing, click the Show Tags button.

Preferences

To specify a root directory, or to select the type of path name for a local file URL, choose Preferences... from the Edit menu.

To specify the root directory, click the Select... button and open a file in the root directory from the standard file dialog. (Note the the file isn't actually opened).

The path name to a file may contain Macintosh characters that are not recognizable by certain browsers. To construct path names that conforms to the ISO standard click on the ISO Path Name radio button. To construct path names that are recognized by Mosaic for the Macintosh, but may not be recognized by other browsers, click on the Macintosh Path Name radio button.

To select a browser application, click the Select... button and open a browser such as Mosaic or MacWeb.

Styles

Define the font, text face, size and color for component text by chosing Styles... from the Edit menu.

Select a tag from the popup menu of the dialog, and specify the font, text face, size and color by chosing from the Edit menu.

Search

To find a text string or replace it with another, chose from the Search menu. The search may wrap around to the beginning of the document, it may be for a whole word, and it may be case sensitive. More general search strings can be defined by using a grep regular expression.

URLs

To extract and edit a list of the URLs in the current document, chose Edit from the URLs menu. To edit a new list of URLs, choose New from the URLs menu.

To sort the list of Title/URLs by Title, click the Sort button. To delete a Title/URL from the table, click on the Title/URL in the table and click the Delete button. To edit a Title and URL, click on the Title/URL in the table, use the edit text boxes to edit these items, and click the Replace button. To add a new Title/URL to the table, use the edit text boxes to edit their values, and click the Add button. To create a new document with the tags for a URL list, chose Export from the URLs menu.

User Tags

User tags are created and added to the current document by chosing User Tags from the Windows menu.

To create a new user tag, click the Add button of the User Tags palette. To delete the selected tag, click the Delete button. To insert a user tag into the current document, click the tag in the User Tags palette.

To edit the text of an existing tag, command-click the tag. To change the position of a tag in the list, option-click the tag and drag it to a new position.

Keyboarding

To enter HTML escape codes for composed characters, type the normal keys for the composed character. For example, typing option-c enters ç into the document.

The command-keys that are not shown in menu items for HTML Editor are as follows:

Author

HTML Editor is written by Rick Giles.

Shareware

HTML Editor version 1 is shareware. Registered users will receive free electronic updates of version 1. To register, please send $25 to

Rick Giles
Box 207, Acadia University
Wolfville, N. S.
B0P 1X0
CANADA

Acknowledgements

Many people contributed to the development of HTML Editor through testing, and offering constructive suggestions. Thanks to the people at Prograph International, to Stephane Bortzmeyer, Dave Cartwright, Walter Clinton, James Cook, Robert Currie, Thomas Diessel, Ramon Felciano, Jim Hanlon, Jim Harrison, Roger Larsen, Heikki Lehvaslaiho, Max Metral, Angus McIntyre, Bill Milheim, Leif Erik Otteraa, William S. Parks, Marco Piovanelli, Bill Richardson, Frank Simmons, Aleks Totic, David Walker, Michael Will, Andy J. Williams, Hal Wine, and to others.