<!-- ***************************************************** --> <!-- * * --> <!-- * Save this eLetter into a file with .htm(l) ending * --> <!-- * and unzip any attachment in same place: then view * --> <!-- * it (and print it) using a web browser. * --> <!-- * * --> <!-- * --No attachment, no indents with hard spaces-- * --> <!-- * --to keep txt file readable-- * --> <!-- ***************************************************** -->
PocketPad User--
If you make a copy of this file with an .htm extension and then load it into a web browser, you will see a letter that looks like it was in a first rate word processor. And if you print it from the browser, it will look as if printed by a word processor. Yet, it is this .txt file and can be sent by ordinary email. Further, you can "attach" a .zip file containing images, signature (image), sound files and other things you want in the pages of your eletter. Anything that will print from a word processor will print...though sound and video, of course, won't.
I call this sort of letter the eLetter (as we have eMail). But to arouse curiosity I've called it such things as the browseOgram and, for web folk, the car page...going from one home page area to another. But what we are really dealing with here is EVERYman's eWord processor.
And, since you can print the eletter and mail it by U.S. Mule, it's Everyman's word processor. The good word processors are expensive and difficult to learn. They have proprietary file formats, too, so if you want to send the files back and forth so you can work jointly on them or include elements that don't print, both parties have to have the same one. If you want to email the letter you can, of course, export (save) the file as a .txt file. But then you have to secondarily learn how your word processor handles this export. What will come out as what. Of course, you'd likely just send the wp file as an attachment, but you'd then miss the possibility of a quick reading "in" the recipient's mailer program.
Before the word processor was the text editor. The text editor starts as a typewriter emulation. From typewriter, particularly a later one like even the earliest IBM Selectric (as later than an old stand up Underwood), the step up to a simple text editor is modest. Then, features can be added to "shortcut" some typing. Text editors are even more widely available (free and at minimal cost) than browsers. So Everyman's word and eword processor's "keyboard" is a text editor. And its monitor and printer is a web browser. The writer has both, of course, so as to have wysiwyg capability in the eword processor.
You and your reader don't need to have the same text editor or the same web browser, though you narrow the selection of browsers if you use "cutting edge" typing...such as tables and frames (screening multiple pages). But the top two range from free (MS Internet Explorer 3+) to $50 (Netscape Navigator 3+). Text editors? Well, two come free with Windows 95 and one of those with Windows 3.1. And PocketPad, through 1.9, is and will remain free.
Writing for a browser to display your "text" involves using what are called tags. A tag is made up of a "less than" (<) and then a "greater than" (>) and between them the name of the tag. Tags come in pairs. An opening tag is as I just described. Its closing tag adds a "slash" (/) after the "less than" mark. If these last sentences seem a bit clumsy, it's because I want you to be able to read this both as text and in the browser. If I type a tag, the browser will intercept it and obey it but not screen it or print it.
Look at the very top. Everything before the exclamation mark in each of the top lines is there to get a "less than" sign printed before the exclamation mark in the browser so you see the tag for a comment. If I typed the < there in the text...those comment lines would not be seen in the browser. That's what you will do in eletters since those lines are to be seen only in the mailer.
The constantly growing collection of tags is named HTML or HyperText Marking Language. The system was developed for (web) page designers. The tags are considered to be typographers' marks such as those used in print shops to control the setting up of the page by typesetters. And there are HTML "editors" for people who want to design and build web pages...even if only a personal "home" page. Indeed, the web is a mass of Hallmark home pages and sales brochures. I still think of the original (all right, old) ARPANet for researchers with email, the web, all of it developed for the purpose of interactive thinking and comodeling or the networking of active minds. My dreaming up of the eletter model...is to get the whole thing back to this transparent infrastructure "around" groups of minds. In the fall of 1996, I saw news of the major universities and research institutions talking of a second Internet, separate from the existing one. Those behind this (centering around Stanford University, I think)feel that all the commercial sludge...the existing one has just become too slow. It's not a bandwidth problem, but the traffic, indexing, and the rest. They need the old ARPANet but with all the new technology. Commercial firms, too, drop out (keeping the technology)into IntranetS.
The real slowness, I think, is that thinking writers don't need a page designer's tools and are slowed or stopped by them. We (you and I, the writers of eletters) can look at the HTML in a different way than the page designers. A writer's way. Think of it as HTPS...keep the "hypertext" which refers to the "jumps" (remember old cross-reference tags) in the text. But "marking language" gives way (in our private thinking) to "punctuation system."
Even HTML should be HTMS...it's a system not a language. But for us it's a special sort of marking that has a name, punctuation. It's used to mark the linearly flowing text (writing)to key the reader to what the writer, as a talker, would be doing with his voice to "get the message 'in' the phrases across."
If you think about it, you'll realize that we've pushed our system of punctuation beyond the little collection of marks such as commas, periods, and colons. First, we added marks like dashes and ellipses. Three periods and...you have the "pregnant pause." Two hyphens, already and "extra" punctuation mark, and you have a variant of the parenthetical skip. It's more a lifting of the voice to show a break in the unfolding. But then, italics or bold are punctuation marks, as well, the first showing a softening of the voice, a second voice, almost, but not a whisper. And bold is a strong emphasis, not necessarily a shout, usually designated by "all caps." Trained actors and the British (raised) would call it a "placing" of the voice. It fills the listener's attention.
Poet's even use "white space" to punctuate, placing phrases, skipping spaces, indenting variably. And they counterpoint the phrasing done with marks. And, today, they use italics for a second voice, though most would find bold, or even all caps, repugnant. Emphasis is found in the ground, in the white space.
It's no big jump to see even a table as a form of punctuation. Your flow of phrases are not cut apart by commas or semicolons, but by cells and the "switch" that sends the phrases to their respective cells. You couldn't "recite" this bit of speech, but...you can think it in your multisensory talking (thinking). And you can read it aloud, of course, row by row, left to right. But, unless your "listener" hears in a multisensory way, he won't "hear" what you just read.
All right, how do you punctuate thusly in, say, Notepad? To begin, you do need to read an "HTML for Dummies" or something so that you know a basic collection of writer's tags and how to use them. Unlike a comma, you can't type a tag "as you write." You'd have to have keys or clicks set to type "strings" to do that. And, for the moment, we're staying in Notepad. I suggest two marks such as < and >. These place starting and ending tag positions. Or for standout visibility use @ and $ or any other infrequently used marks. When it's time to go back and fill in the tags, open a second Notepad with a page of tags and use the clipboard. It's a little cumbersome, of course, but it is also an opportunity to read through your text as you go. And it's after the heat of writing has cooled and the product is almost ready to send.
If you're exporting .txt from a word processor, you will have autotype or boilerplate...but all the problems I cited above. A fancier text editor may have boilerplate or key or click settings for typing. As you've guessed, PocketPad has very sophisticated systems of each.
I added HTML to PocketPad in 1.2 and some Javascript capability in 1.4. While I had boilerplate in 1.0, I've built a complex system in 1.4 with a special .ini file for storing sets that are then loaded in (or saved out) like the loaded spare cylinders for a revolver. You can have a hell of a "vocabulary" on hand beyond what I've put on menus and hot keys. All the latter involve "cursor placement" in the elaborate batch typing. Boilerplates don't.
I put it in layers, in a sense. First I put two items onto the Edit menu. ^S printed <|> and ^X printed </|>. You could then keep tag innards in the eight boilerplates or on a page in another of the MDI edit child windows. (PocketPad allows many edit windows and each may have Notepad's 32K content.) Then, I developed the HTML menu and hot keys. I still use the ^S or ^X if I do something like going back and putting in the paragraph tag but not wanting the skipped line I get using the clicked tag. And, of course, for new tags short enough to not take up boilerplate or force use of the clipboard.
If you click an anchor or image tag, an HTML "editor" will give you a dialog for setting out your parameters. PocketPad will give you a sequence of InputQuery minidialogs, each asking about a parameter and explaining it. You type in the multiple item tag as you go, as you'd type in the three periods of an ellipsis mark.
I'm writing this to go into the pcketpad.zip file through which I distribute PocketPad and in which I don't say much about the eletter. Of course, I can't chase all those files down, even to update PocketPad and certainly not to insert an extra .txt file. So this file might get to you by some other route and you might not have PocketPad. You certainly have Notepad. But to ward off frustration, you can get pcketpad.zip by clicking on this link IF you're in a browser and on-line. Possibly, it's still 1.4. If it is, check back. More likely, it's already 1.5 which has a META menu added making available a powerful tool for adding "metadata" to your documents for documentation, indexing, and preparation for search tools and even the coming Virtual Encyclopedia of Absolutely Everything.
Take care,
Gene Fowler
acorioso@ccnet.com