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Caveat - What You Cannot Do with HTML

HTML was designed to describe the structure of a document, rather than its page layout, fonts, or other common word-processing concepts. It has some overlap, however, and NaviPress attempts to provide a word processor-like interface.  Still,  we are limited 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 ( tabs and spaces ) 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, except by using HTML tables.

If you want to use spaces this way, try using a preformatted paragraph or use the non-breaking space character (Option-space on the Macintosh, specified in the Special Characters dialog under X).

NaviPress supports an editting mode that 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 NaviPress you must grab the newline at the beginning of the paragraph. In HTML the newline often specifies displayable information about the next paragraph -- list bullets for example -- 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 NaviPress 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.

*The effects of style sheets can only be seen by NaviPress browers.  Other browsers will not display these effects.

Style Sheets may conflict with other Format menu effects. Example: If your description of a level 1 heading indicates that it should be displayed in a bold font, that is different from the Bold emphasis and there is no way to turn it off, aside from respecifying the heading description in the style sheet

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

At of this writing, Web browsers only support gif, jpeg and xbm files embedded in the HTML document.  In fact, many browsers only support gif files, so keep this in mind when authoring documents.

NaviPress ignores the formating of the source text.

NaviPress 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.

NaviPress rearranges tags.

If NaviPress 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 HTML source with different attributes. The standard allows only one BODY tag, and NaviPress 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," creatied by specifying many title elements. NaviPress will ignore all but the last one.

HEAD tags (like TITLE) inside the BODY

NaviPress will move these up into the HEAD section , where they belong.

LI tags not in any list (UL, OL)

NaviPress will turn these into <P> tags.

Character formating around paragraphs

If NaviPress 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> tag.  This is in compliance with the DTD, a technical specification of current HTML 3.0 standards.

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