ARM Club 3

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ ARM Club 3 / TheARMClub_PDCD3.iso / programs / comms_networking / html2 / !HTML / !Help < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1997-08-26 | 13.3 KB | 257 lines

Name : !HTML² Purpose : A macro insertion tool to make HTML even easier! Author : Richard Goodwin Status : Freeware Version : 2.03 (August 1997) Features : User definable macros for all common HTML commands split over four windows - Styles, Effects, Characters and Addresses This application, along with the files contained within, © Richard Goodwin 1996/7. This application may be freely distributed by any means AS LONG AS: * all files remain intact, with the possible except of the macro definition and option files but... * wherever possible the default definition and option files should be the ones used in distribution copies * no unreasonable charge is made. Quick User Guide: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Load it. Click on iconbar icon. Window opens. Click on icon, stuff appears in text windows with input focus. 'Nuff said. Preamble: ~~~~~~~~~ Anyone can create World Wide Web pages on the Acorn range of computers; all you need is a text editor, such as !Edit, and preferably a web browser to test your pages. However, the most annoying thing about doing it this way is the repetition of having to type in common commands over and over again. I tried using normal macro insertion tools, but they just didn't quite work how I wanted - too slow, couldn't see enough buttons, forever having to define or load definitions etc. So, I wrote one myself! In fact I wrote more than one, and users of the original can drop their original definition files on to a running copy of this latest version and hey presto - their original definition files can be used (and even saved as the default!) Starting Up: ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Pretty simple really. Double-click on the !HTML² icon to load it, and four small icons appear on the icon bar; these are "S", "E", "Ç" and "A", which stand for "Styles", "Effects", "Characters" and "Addresses" (and NOT a certain well-known games console company :). Clicking with the LEFT mouse button opens the window for that set of macros; clicking with the RIGHT mouse button will load the macro definitions for that set of macros into your text editor. Of course the MIDDLE mouse button will open a menu, and this is the same whichever icon you're over at the time. Note that due to the size of the icons you do have to be fairly accurate with your mouse pointer; to make the icons any bigger would take up a large amount of icon bar! The menu and the choices window are explained later in this file. Editing Macros: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Looking at the definition files you can see that everything is pretty self explanitary; altering the text after "HEAD=" will define the macro for the Header macro; it can be any length up to 255 characters, with any characters apart from a carriage return (which the program takes to be the end of the definition) and a backslash - "\". (The backslash is used to tell the program to insert a carriage return when typing the macro, so line1\line2\line2 will come out as line1 line2 line3 in case you really must have that carriage return!) Obviously with 255 characters to play with this means that where you define, say, what <H1> will look like, you can actually have lots of effects added to it; if you want all headlines to be centered, bright green and have a line straight through them you can, just by putting these in the H1ON definition! Just make sure when you define NOH1 to switch them all back off again though... The only special cases to macro definitions are the colours for the colour palette; you can ONLY have a set of six characters after the "=" sign, and these characters are the hexadecimal numbers to define the red, green and blue parts of the colour in the standard RRGGBB format. If you don't understand this way of defining colours... well, I've put quite a nice selection on there, perhaps you ought to leave them like that... ;-) As well as defining macros, in some cases you can even change the writing that appears in the icon for that macro! For instance, you can change the icon that says "Address03" to read "My email address". You control this by altering any macro definitions that end in "TAG", such as "AdTag03" - defs are for defining the actual macro, and tag is for defining the icon. These will be restricted to a certain length depending on the icon. Here's an example: AdTag03=My email address AdDef03=<a href="mailto:mabel@argonet.co.uk">Richard Goodwin</a> The icon will say "My email address", and when it's clicked on you'll get the "<a href...." stuff inserted into your text editor. Safety First ~~~~~~~~~~~~ If any of the definitions files are accidentally deleted, there's no need to worry. Firstly, !HTML² won't crash if it doesn't find the file - it just defines its own macros and uses them. These are almost identical to the example definition files supplied. Secondly, if you do lose a definition file you can click on "Save definitions as default" to generate new ones. Or if you've /just/ lost a file, look in "!HTML².Backups" - there might be a backup file (it does this when you click on "Save definitions..." just in case). A lot of work has gone into making sure you don't crash the program with bad definitions: definitions /don't/ have to be in the same order, the names /don't/ have to be in capital or lower case letters, and /don't/ have to be all there - !HTML² checks the file for any macro or tag definitions, and if it finds any it converts the variable part at the front to capitals automatically then matches them up with the correct program variables. All you have to do is make sure there's an "=" right after the definition with gaps, 'cos if there isn't it will be ignored. Finally the numbers in the definitions (i.e. the "03" in "AdTag03") don't have to have that leading zero, it's just there so that everything lines up nicely. You can even have completely blank lines in your definition files, they'll just be ignored. Other safety features: you can click on a second macro button while a macro is already being typed it won't interupt the first; !HTML² will simply wait until the first is finished, then start typing the next one. You can chain together quite a few commands like this if you're fast enough! However, if you try too many (i.e. if adding another macro to the chain would exceed the maximum permitted length) then !HTML² will just beep at you and do the ones it can. Special Features ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You can also have lots of macro files - if you drop a text file onto the iconbar icon or any macro window it will be parsed to see if any macros can be found, so you can have a whole set sitting on your hard drive... Note that these are cumulative, i.e. loading a new definitions file only overwrites the macros and icons which are defined in that file and leaves all the other macros alone, so if you just create a file with "AdDef01" defined and drop this onto !HTML², every other definition will be unaffected. If you drop a set of macros onto the icon and think, "Hmm, wouldn't it be nice to have those as the default ones," then just click on the "Save definitions.." option in the Choices window and the program will make it so - or you can get the program to do this for you every time you quit. This means that users of !HTMacroL can drop their User file on !HTML² and can use almost all of their definitions; if you look inside "!HTML².Examples" you'll find an old User file, plus three files containing just palette information - ColorsAcrn has the Acorn 16 colour desktop palette, ColorsGrey has 32 shades of grey, and ColorsNorm has the default full-colour palette. But the fun doesn't end there - dropping other types of file onto !HTML² also does groovy stuff! JPEG and GIF files will cause !HTML² to insert the code necessary to display that image! HTML files will add links to that file! Archives and Sparkives will be linked to! By combining macro buttons and this drag-and-drop stuff you hardly need to type at all now... The Menu: ~~~~~~~~~ ___________ |__HTML__2__| |Info >| - pretty obvious really |-----------| |Styles | - opens "Styles" window |Effects | - opens "Effects" window |Characters | - opens "Characters" window |Addresses | - opens "Addresses" window |-----------| |Choices > | - allows the saving of window states etc. |Reload | - if you alter a definition file, click this to use it instantly |-----------| |Quit_______| - Quits the program, removes all four icons; with the right options selected it can also save window states and macro definition files. The Options: ~~~~~~~~~~~~ * Autosave window states: If this is switched on then when you quit !HTML² it will save the position, size and scrollbar postion of each window and whether it is open or not. Next time you load up the windows will have these attributes, and opened if necessary. Note that if you change to a smaller screen mode I've made sure the windows can't go off the side of the screen, so windows will be pushed in to the available space. You can use the "Don't use window states on startup" to delete the definition file. * Autosave macro definitions: With this ticked quitting !HTML² will cause the macro definitions to be saved as the default ones to use. This is handy if for instance you're forever dropping different colour palettes on to !HTML² - the last one used will be loaded next time. * Save window states as default: This saves the position, size and scrollbar postion of each window so that next time you load up !HTML² the windows will be in your favourite places. See the bit about "Autosave window states:" for more info. * Reload window states: If you've saved your favourite window states then moved the windows around, you can instantly set them back to your prefered places with this button. * Don't use window states on startup: Using this option will remove the file storing the window states, and so the !HTML² windows will remain closed and when opened will be in the postion I defined as defaults. If you use "Save window states as default" or quit the program with "Autosave window states" switched on then obviously the windows will again be opened wherever you've told them to. * Save definitions as default: Saves the current macro files to disc, and makes a backup of any files already present. If you've dropped a definition files, such as a new colour palette, on to !HTML² then you should use this button if you want to keep these colours as your standard ones. * Reload definitions: If you don't like the changes you've made by dropping definitions file onto !HTML² then use this to get the default ones back. Also, if you've made changes to the definition files then click on this to use them straight away. * View scripts: This opens the directory with the definition files in it. * View backups: This opens the directory with any backups of definition files in it; backups are made when you "Save definitions as default" (or use the "Autosave macro definitions" feature). Have fun! ~~~~~~~~~ I'm sure you'll come up with other uses for !HTML² - as it inserts text into text editors, word processors, email programs, even some writable icons you can build up frequently-used phrases, email addresses and so on; there's even a customised version of this program out there just for inserting IRC commands :-) Rich, Nov. '95 - Aug. '96. Email mabel@argonet.co.uk Versions: ~~~~~~~~~ 1.00: first version 1.01: when I actually got round to using it in a real situation, realised I'd forgotten to include <center> and </center>. Oh well... 1.02: added polling after each character insert so that characters didn't get lost and line feeds didn't screw up the text underneath. Slows it down a little, but not too much. Tested in StrongEd, Edit and Zap. 1.03: Clicking on a button while a macro was part-way through insertion stopped the first macro and the second took over. Now they'll form an orderly queue, space permitting (otherwise you'll get a beep). Speed increased by only polling every fifth character (or on a linespace or space). 1.04: Added </P> button and changed default centring commands to be compatible with Netscapisms/HTML3. Distributed via ArgoNet WebPack package. 2.00: Seperated into 4 windows (and so 4 icons - easier than I hoped!); finally got it to do a colour palette; figured out changing writing on buttons. Reload function added, as well as the loading definitions into a text editor. Dropping files on icon/windows to do file-specific macros (or load as definitions) added. (IRC Macro version 1.00ß limited release; RichMacro, the same but with different sprites, put to work to add different sign-offs to the end of all technical support emails, and insert frequently-used phrases into emails too :) 2.01: Window position saving finally added thanks to Jason Tribbeck; this file updated and example files added. Released via ArgoNet WebPack package. 2.02: Added code to check for presence of MicroSpell module. MicroSpell checks all keyboard input for spelling, but couldn't quite handle HTML2's speed. Now a check is done for MicroSpell, and if it's there a one character at a time mode is used; this is done on the fly, so if the MicroSpell module is loaded/killed while information is being processed it'll automatically adjust. 2.03 Images dropped onto any HTML2 window/icon will now have width and height tags added.