Utility Menu

Overview
The Utility menu contains editing features used to simplify page creation, generally using various replacement and conversion commands. The Find and Replace commands are used to search for and replace text strings within the current document, or globally within all documents in the editor. Preprocess Text and other Conversion commands operate on the current text selection. Note that holding down the Option or Shift keys alters the name and behavior of these conversion commands. The replacement tables used by these commands all reside under Conversion Preferences on the Preferences card. 

The Utility menu contains:

Show/Hide Rulers
Choosing Show Ruler from the Utility menu displays a ruler along the top of the edit area.  Dragging on the grey area repositions it vertically, while the left and right arrows may be dragged to set margins. The scale is displayed in Courier in the current editor font size.

Show/Hide Bookmarks
Choosing the Show Bookmarks command from the Utility menu displays three bookmarks along the right edge of the Body field. Each bookmark may be dragged vertically to the location of the scroll "thumb" (the small rectangular box representing the scroll position). Note that each bookmark stores the Body field's current scroll position regardless of its vertical position -- the ability to move the bookmarks is only to assist visually.

To remember the current scroll position of the Body field, drag a bookmark with the Option or Shift key down, or simply Option- or Shift-Click on it.

To restore the Body field to the stored location, double click on the desired bookmark.

Show/Hide Keywords
Displays a text field at the top of the document window and locks the document text. Clicking on words within the document adds them to the comma-delimited keyword list. If you wish to add a phrase (without adding a comma between each word), click each word of the phrase while holding the Shift key down. To close the keyword field, click the close box located in its upper left corner. Note that the keyword field is not cleared – it remains stored with the document.

The contents of the keyword field are used for the META element's CONTENT attribute. The META element

   <META HTTP-EQUIV="keywords" CONTENT="ribeye,sirloin,flank,porterhouse">

might be used by a search engine to locate a document by its keywords. (META elements are always located within the document Header.)

Find…
Displays a Find dialog box. There are various options for how and where searches are conducted. HTML.edit will search the current document, or anywhere within the editor for the search text, navigate to and hilite the found text. When the International checkbox is on, diacritical marks will be differentiated from other characters (eg., " ü ≠ u "); the default is to ignore them (eg., " ü = u ").

Following is a description of the various search modes:

   Any     Searches for any combination of the text, in any order.
   Chars   Searches for a match anywhere within words.
   Words  Searches for a match with only complete words.
   String   Ignoring word boundaries, searches for a contiguous
              string of characters.
   Whole   Searches for the entire text string, ignoring partial-word matches.

Once a search has been conducted, subsequent Find Again commands (Command-G) will re-execute the search.

Replace
Choosing the Replace... command from the Utility menu allows you to replace a given search string with a replacement string within the current document, or globally over all documents in the editor. Shortcut: Command-R.

Replace in Selection
Choosing the Replace in Selection... command from the Utility menu allows you to replace a given search string with a replacement string within the current text selection, using the same replacement rules as the Replace command.  Shortcut: Command-Shift-R.

Insert Custom Entity
HTML.edit will automatically insert the current date (in one of three formats) or time (in two formats) into your HTML document when exporting your document to a text file. This is done by inserting a short entity code into your document using the Insert Custom Entity command.

You may also define up to ten custom entities and replace them on export with the contents of a selected Document, Master Header or Footer. Check the Preferences card under Conversion Preferences or Custom Entity Table Instructions for a description of how to customize this option.

Place the insertion point into your document at the desired location and choose a date format, time format or custom entity to insert the code used on export to substitute the current date, time, or included text.

   Short Date:             4/23/95
   Abbreviated Date:   Sat, Apr 23, 1995
   Long Date:             Saturday, April 23, 1995
   Time:                     2:00 PM
   Long Time:              2:00:00 PM

For your international audience, I'd recommend avoiding the Short Date format, as in many countries the month and day are reversed. Note that the date and time codes are formatted according to your Macintosh's localization, not necessarily as above.

Preprocess Text
After importing a text file, this may be the first command to perform on your text. It performs four separate processes on the selected text:

1. Converts any instances of the four characters used to create HTML tags (<, >, & and " ) into the entity codes used to display them properly with a WWW browser. This uses the "Text Preprocessing" Table (see below).

2. The text selection is then scanned for any entity characters, which will be replaced with HTML entity codes (such as ü to &uuml;).

3. Converts "illegal" characters with safer alternatives, such as curly quotes with &quot; or ™ with (tm). This uses the "Table Conversion" table (see below).

4. Converts return-delimited paragraphs into HTML paragraphs (bounded by <P></P>).

Check the Preferences card under Conversion Preferences to customize the various conversion tables.

Holding down the Option key while performing this command alters the direction of the conversion.

Table Convert
Similar to the Convert Entities command (found under the Hypertext menu's Entity Submenu), Table Convert uses a modifiable lookup table to convert instances of characters that won't be displayed correctly over the Internet to a "safe" equivalent. For example, the Macintosh-only trademark symbol ™ can be translated to (tm). For information on customizing the conversion, check either the Table Conversion Instructions, or the Table Conversion section under Conversion Preferences).

• Holding down the Option key before choosing the menu alters the direction of the conversion.

• Holding down the Shift key before choosing the menu uses the second "Alternate" table rather than the default.

• Holding down both Shift and Option keys performs a reverse conversion using the alternate table.

Convert ¶ to <P>
Used to convert a selection of preexisting text into HTML paragraphs. Surrounds blocks of text (having a blank line between each "paragraph") with the HTML paragraph containers <P></P>, with single lines delimited with line break tags <BR>. Useful for converting a lot of paragraph text to HTML paragraphs at once. If the line breaks aren't desired, first Unwrap the text.

Unwrap Text
Often text from online sources has a return at the end of every line. To convert a selection of text into paragraphs, use this command. Blocks of text having a blank line between them are treated as separate paragraphs.

Default Text
Sets the text font, style and size of the current document to the default text as specified on the Preferences card. Text pasted into HTML.edit from other applications may inherit the formatting of its origin. Also, this command resets the document font after using the Hilight HTML or other hilight commands.

Remove HTML
Removes most common HTML tags from the current text selection, including Anchors, Images, and tags in certain complex formats (such as lists). Also reconverts any character entities back into their original characters (eg., &uuml; back to ü ).

Back to File menu, on to HyperText menu, or return to Tool Palette Menus.