Impression to HTML

Appendix

This sections contains information on the various files used 'internally' by Imp-HTML and explains how you you can alter these to suit your own requirements.

Setup files

These can be found in the sub directory 'Setup' of the Imp-HTML application directory. In here you will find five files, they are;

  CharMap
  D_Effects
  Effects
  Preamble
  Styles

CharMap

This is a list of ascii characters and the characters or strings of characters they will be converted to in HTML. Each line has the character and then a Tab character (ascii 9) followed by the HTML equivalent. If you load this file into a text editor it should look something like this.

The appearance of the Tab character, shown as a right pointing arrow here, will depend upon which text editor you use.

If you are familiar with HTML you will recognise these. For example, the 'sexed' double quotation marks are translated into " the pound character into &pound:, the < and > characters into < and > and so on. You can modify or add to this list if you wish.

D_Effects

This is the list of Effects that will be used if you click on 'Default' in the Effects section of the Mapping window. It consists of four lines, one each for Bold, Italic, Underline and Centre, in that order. On each line is, first, the tag used to switch the effect on, then a Tab character, then the tag used to cancel the effect.

If you examine this file in a text editor you will see that there is a space after the 'cancel' tags for each of the first three. This is because when you double-click on a word in Ovation Pro to highlight it and then make the word bold, italic or underlined, if the word is followed by a space Ovation Pro also includes the space in the Effect. For example, if you make a word bold in this way in Ovation Pro then the 'cancel bold' command will actually be placed after the following space. For some strange reason spaces before a 'cancel' are ignored by some browsers, so -

This is Bold and this isn't.

will become, in HTML

This is Boldand this isn't.

To avoid this a space is placed after the 'cancel' tag. This can sometimes mean that you get a spurious space, for example, between a word and a full stop or comma, but even if you don't bother to weed these out they are much less common and less offensive to the eye than the 'joined up' words illustrated above.

Effects

This defines the Effects menu.

Each line in the file creates a line on the menu. First there is the name (no more than 12 characters) as it will appear on the menu. This is followed by a Tab character, then the code to turn the effect on, another Tab character, and the code to turn the effect off. The illustration shows the default file and menu and you can see how the two relate.

You can, of course, edit or add to this file to suit your own preferences.

Preamble

This will be used as the first part of any HTML created. It can contain anything you like, as long as it's valid HTML. The default Preamble file is shown below, and this is extremely basic.

Styles

This creates the Styles menu. Normally this would be a bit longer and more complicated that the Effects file.

On each line is first the name as it will appear on the menu (no more than 12 characters), a Tab character, the 'on' code, another Tab character, then the 'off' code.

The standard file, and the menu, are shown below.

Some of the first entries have another Tab character and field after the 'off' code. This is used to force the settings of the buttons that set the end of line mapping and whether the Style starts a new HTML chapter or appears in the Index. Five letters are recognised, and these can be on their own or paired. They must be in upper case, and are -

I - Include anything in this Style in the Index file
C - Start a new Chapter when you find this Style
N - Set the the end of line button to 'none'
B - Set the end of line button to 'br'
P - Set the end of line button to 'p'

The 'Colour Red' entry is really only included as an example of how you can use this menu to make your headings and sub headings coloured if you wish.