Newt's Cape

Newt's Cape -- the "big" picture

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction (this book); also Help
  2. Other Applications and Approaches
  3. Newt's Cape User Interface
  4. Setup, Issues
  5. HTML Syntax
  6. HEAD tags
  7. BODY tags: headings, blocks
  8. BODY tags: lists, phrases
  9. BODY tags: anchor, graphics, tables
  10. BODY tags: forms
  11. Other Tools: NewtPack, Sloup, Newt's Cape Graphics Converter
  12. Embedding NewtonScript in HTML
  13. Advanced: META; A and IMG URLs
  14. Advanced: FORM URLs
  15. Advanced: APIs
  16. Character Entities
  17. Register; Plans
  18. Tag Index

Note: you can read these files in your favorite web browser or HTML reader/editor, text editor to see the tags and comments, or install the Newton books. The "advanced" documents are available to registered users only.

Some Terminology

Newt's Cape
creates Newton books with text, graphics, hypertext links, tables and embedded forms from standard HTML documents, such as this one.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language: a standard tagging language (based on SGML) to represent documents; authoring tools/web browsers present documents.
SGML
Standard Generalized Markup Language
URL
Uniform Resource Locator (aka link)

Newt's Cape

Newt's Cape is a tool for viewing content. Like Newton Press, it can be used to create books (directly on the Newton). Like a web browser, you can view pages from the Internet (assuming you have installed Newton Internet Enabler (NIE) on your NOS 2.x Newton).

You can use Newt's Cape to

Other features include:

  1. numbered lists
    • nested lists

Some Newt's Cape features in a Table
FeatureExamples
ISO chars¿À¥
idiomatic elementsEMSAMPSTRONG
formatsboldE=mc2H2O
form objects check1 radio1radio2

More form objects (longer demo):

Is This Checked?

Pick a Door:

Edit me:

password:

You can access HTML documents from:

To start Newt's Cape (on the Newton): Newt's Cape Icon

HTML

HTML is an evolving standard, with many possible syntactic variations and uses. Newt's Cape should handle most common tags and attributes -- those that are in the HTML 2.0 standard, with some from the HTML 3.2 proposal -- and gracefully ignore those that it does not understand. Generally, Newt's Cape does best with what we have documented and tested -- thanks to our registered users for additional testing and feedback.

HTML is based on/implemented in SGML. SGML (ISO 8879) is language for the representation of documents (actually, it's a language to describe languages); most WYSIWYG document editors deal with just the presentation of documents. As an author, you can focus more on the content, structure and intent of documents, and leave most of the display and format details to the viewing application, e.g., web browser. You sacrifice some immediate control over appearance in exchange for portability.

Since complete SGML can be quite daunting (akin to using a programming language) and many editing tools don't keep tags from cluttering the content, many potential users have used the acronym "Sounds Good, Maybe Later". Although SGML may be needed for large, complex, industrial-strength document collections, HTML can be quite useful as an introduction to SGML-like concepts and as a tool in its own right.

Distribution, Registration

To make Newt's Cape available to many users at a reasonable price and to continue to fix and adapt it rapidly based on user feedback, we are distributing it as shareware. After a few days of trial use, you should Register Newt's Cape if you continue to use it. Newt's Cape and associated documents, files and tools are © 1995-98, S. Weyer and G. Simon, All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Please check with us before redistributing.

Although most of the Newt's Cape documentation is available here, by registering you can receive additional documentation, other tools (NewtPack, Sloup and Newt's Cape Graphic Converter), more support, priority, examples, and answers, early access to new versions, and relief from "Shareware Procrastination Guilt Syndrome".

For More Info

This document (in all its formats) is © 1995-98. Steve Weyer, Greg Simon. All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Version 1.5. Last updated: Jan 1998


Steve Weyer - weyer@kagi.com
Greg Simon - gsimon@ricochet.net