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Caveat - What You Cannot Do with HTML
HTML was designed to describe meaning rather than page layout or
common word-processing concepts. It has some overlap, however, and
GNNpress attempts to provide a word processor-like interface, but we are
limitted to the idioms supplied in the HTML standard.
Here are some limits you should know about:
- Multiple spaces
- HTML says that any amount of white space will display as one space. This
means that if you type two spaces they will only display as one. If you type
a tab it will show up as a space. You cannot get a double space after a period.
You cannot indent a paragraph with a tab. You cannot line things up in
columns.
If you want to use spaces this way, try using a preformatted
paragraph
or use the non-breaking space character.
GNNpress can be put
into a mode where it will convert multiple spaces in to a series of spaces
and non-breaking spaces. Be aware that if you use this mode, the text on
your pages might wrap poorly in some browsers.
- Paragraph Formatting
- In some word processors if you want to grab paragraph formatting when
copying a selection into the clipboard you must grab the newline at the end
of the paragraph. In GNNpress you must grab the newline at the beginning
of the paragraph. In HTML the newline often specifies displayable information
about the next paragraph -- for example bullets -- and so refers more to
the paragraph following it than the one preceding it.
- Bullets in lists
- These are not characters which may be selected. Think of them as part
of the newline which separates paragraphs. The only way you may manipulate
them is to manipulate the newline as well. Thus you may not select or delete
them without selecting or deleting the newline.
- Styles
- The style sheets in GNNpress do not behave the way normal style sheets
behave; rather, they provide a description for how each HTML element is to
be displayed. Only one style sheet may be used in a page and it will refer
to the entire page.
- Titles
- Every page has a title. This is not the filename (which is called an
URL). The title is what will be placed at the top of a window displaying
the page. Changing the title will not change the URL, nor will changing the
URL change the title.
- Images
- The web only supports gif, jpeg and xbm files at the moment.
- GNNpress ignores the formating of the source text.
- GNNpress assumes that formating in your source file is irrelevant -
- the
goal is the formating that shows on the screen, not what you see in the text
editor.
- GNNpress rearranges tags.
- If GNNpress receives illegal html, it will force it to be legal. Here
are some common flaws:
- Multiple BODY tags
- Since Netscape has introduced attributes to the BODY tag many people
have inserted a second BODY tag into the middle of their source with their
attributes. You are only allowed one BODY tag, and GNNpress will attempt
to merge the two retaining what attributes it can.
- Multiple TITLE tags
- HTML does not allow for more than one title per page. Netscape allows
for a title scroll with lots of titles. GNNpress will eat all but the last
(in the next release GNNpress will preserve them, but I did not find out
about this gem until too late).
- HEAD tags (like TITLE) inside the BODY
- GNNpress will move these up into the HEAD section (where they belong).
- LI tags not in any list (UL, OL)
- GNNpress will turn these into P tags.
- Character formating around paragraphs
- I'm not sure whether this is legal, but the DTD says not to do it. If
GNNpress finds
<B><H2>text</H2></B> it will convert it into
<B></B><H2>text</H2> because it does not allow the
<B> tag to stretch across the <H2>.