The Characters section is split into two sections; there's an area at the bottom of the window for entering individual characters (or entities) <I>into</I> your text, possibly because you want to use foreign letters; and at the top of the window is an area devoted to lists, which generally add characters <I>at the start of</I> your text.
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<center>
<I>Areas covered on this page</I><br>
<a href="#lists">Lists (unordered and ordered)</a><br>
<a href="#ul+">Unordered lists - extras</a> |
<a href="#ol+">Ordered lists - extras</a> |
<a href="#dlist">Distribution lists</a><br>
<a href="#characters">Character entities</a>
</center>
<hr>
<a name="lists"><h3>Lists</h3></a>
Lists are very much a game of two halves - there are two types of lists, the main variety of which is further split into two types, and which require two parts to work.
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<font size="4"><B><tt><UL></tt> and <tt><OL></tt></B></font>
<br>
The main type of list most people will come across are bullet pointed lists - either with dots, or with incremental numbers or letters. These are known as <I><B>U</B></I>nordered <I><B>L</B></I>ists and <I><B>O</B></I>rdered <I><B>L</B></I>ists, or <font colour="#ff0000"><tt><UL></tt></font> and <font colour="#ff0000"><tt><OL></tt></font> respectively.
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To these bullet pointed lists, all you have to do is switch them on, mark the start of each point (or <I><B>L</B></I>ist <I><B>I</B></I>tem) with an <font colour="#ff0000"><tt><LI></tt></font> tag, and then switch the list off again with a <font colour="#ff0000"><tt></UL></tt></font> or <font colour="#ff0000"><tt></OL></tt></font>. For example...
<P>
<ul>
<li>An unordered list
<li> more of the same
</ul><br>
...and...
<ol>
<li>An ordered list
<li>and some more
</ol>
<br>
...is made up of...
<P><tt><font color="#FF0000"><ul></font><br>
<font color="#FF0000"><li></font> An unordered list<br>
<font color="#FF0000"><li></font> more of the same<br>
<font color="#FF0000"></ul></font>
<p>
</tt>...and...<tt>
<p><font color="#FF0000"><ol></font><br>
<font color="#FF0000"><li></font> An ordered list<br>
<font color="#FF0000"><li></font> and some more<br>
<font color="#FF0000"></ol></font></tt>
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To end a list, you have to use the respective <font color="#ff0000"><tt></UL></tt></font> or <font color="#ff0000"><tt></OL></tt></font> tag. Note that <font color="#ff0000"><tt></LI></tt></font> isn't implemented in HTML³ as I've never found it necessary; it's not like nested tables where the browser will get seriously confused - to do anything like nested lists you have to start a new list, so there's little chance of confusion!
However, there are other interesting things you can do with them; you will notice that underneath the unordered list section of the HTML³ Chars window there are four extra options - <tt>Default</tt>, <tt>disk</tt>, <tt>square</tt> and <tt>circle</tt>. For browsers which use dingbat-style font characters instead of coloured balls for bullet points (i.e not Browse, Webster or ArcWeb, but Fresco and the PC browsers), this enables you to change which character to use from the default dot (<tt>disk</tt>) to a large square, or a funky drop-shadow circle. This can be done either as an extra attribute in the <font colour="#ff0000"><tt><UL></tt></font> tag, or in each individual <font colour="#ff0000"><tt><LI></tt></font> - for instance...
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<ul type="square">
<li>should have a square at the start
<li>so should this
<li type="circle">Should have a drop shadow dot
<li type="disk"> should have a regular dot
<li>back to the square type
</ul><br>
<font color="#ff0000"><B>Help!</B></font> That didn't work!<br>
<I>If you see coloured dots instead of the type of bullet point described, chances are this function isn't supported in your browser - if it isn't in the list in the paragraph above, please contact me so I can update the list.</I>
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<B><font color="#ff0000">Tip:</font></B> As well as using <font color="#ff0000"><tt><UL></tt></font>...<font color="#ff0000"><tt></UL></tt></font> for lists, it's also a handy way of indenting text so you get a nice left hand margin - as with this page.
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Microsoft FrontPage uses <font color="#0000aa"><BLOCKQUOTE>...</BLOCKQUOTE></font> instead, but ArcWeb renders quotes in italic.
<font color="#ff0000"><tt><OL></tt></font> has similar extensions to <font color="#ff0000"><tt><UL></tt></font>. There are five different styles of incremental bullet types for <font color="#ff0000"><tt><OL></tt></font> - the default is 1,2,3 style, but there's also letters and roman numerals in both lower and upper case. HTML³ will allow you to add these in the <font color="#ff0000"><tt><OL></tt></font> tag but not the <font colour="#ff0000"><tt><LI></tt></font>, as it would look <I>very</I> weird.
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Also available is the option to start a list at a number other than one (obviously if you're using letters or roman numerals you have to translate this to a number for the <tt>Start:</tt> section) - this is useful if you stop a list and then want to restart it later in the document, or if you're a computer geek and like to start listing from 0.
Definition lists are much simpler and less option-heavy than the bullet lists. Basically it provides a sub-heading like "term" part (often rendered in bold), and then the definition of that text is indented. You can have several terms and definitions in a definition lists, unlike the bullet lists which are more one-dimensional.
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<B>Example:</B>
<DL>
<DT>This is term one
<DD>Term one is the first in this list.
<DT>This is term two
<DD>Term two comes second in the list.
</DL>
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<font color="#ff0000"><tt><DL></tt></font><br>
<font color="#ff0000"><tt> <DT></tt></font>This is term one<br>
<font color="#ff0000"><tt> <DD></tt></font>Term one is the first in this list.<br>
<font color="#ff0000"><tt> <DT></tt></font>This is term two<br>
<font color="#ff0000"><tt> <DD></tt></font>Term two comes second in this list.<br>
Web browsers generally follow (or can be made to follow) something called the <a href="iso-1.html">ISO8850-1</a> character set, also known as "<a href="iso-1.html">Latin-1</a>"; this may be familiar to you, as it just happens to be the standard character set used by RiscOS! This of course makes the job of checking that the font on your Acorn is the one that is used by the Web browser at the other end fairly simple, although there are no guarantees where the Internet is concerned of course.
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Character entities can be entered in two ways; numerically, such as <tt>ÿ</tt>, or using special names such as <tt>ÿ</tt> (both of which produce the same character, a lower-case "y" with umlauts above it).
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To complicate matters, ISO8850-1 unfortunately doesn't define the full character set; the characters between 128 and 159 are undefined, which might not seem like a great loss until you notice that smart quotes are within this range. Hence, you cannot use named entities for smart quotes and be certain that they will display properly - certain versions of Fresco displays these charcaters as small triagular brackets. You can usually get away with using the numerical version, but it's not guaranteed so I usually suggest "dumbing down" smart quotes (that is, use ordinary straight quote marks instead of smart ones), and avoid other characters in this range if at all possible.<br>
(<I>Note that there are other character standards which might be used to avoid all of this, but then you can't guarantee these character sets are supported either!</I>)
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To make all of this as easy as possible, HTML³ has the following functions built in:
<ul><li>character entities can be output in either <tt>numeric</tt> or <tt>textual</tt> versions (see the <a href="choic.html">Options</a> window)
<li><tt>™</tt> doesn't seem to work as a numeric entity in some versions of Netscape, so it always comes out as the textual version...
<li>...but other characters in the range 128-159 always come out as numeric entities
<li>there's an option to add a reminder in plain English to show what the character is when you're editing the HTML (see the <a href="choic.html">Options</a> window)</ul>
Hopefully this makes the use of characters as compatible as possible with as many browsers as possible.
