@Number List@<:#284,9025><+!>Converting Existing AmiPro files to HTML<-!>
@Number List@<:s><:#284,9025><+!>Font Sizes
@Number List@<:#284,9025><+!>Background Images and Colour Changing
@Number List@<+!>Using Tables
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@H3@<:s><:I0,0,0,0><:#422,9025>1. Installing the Tools
@Standard Text@<:I0,720,0,0><:#573,9025><-!><+!>Firstly ensure that OLEv2 is installed on your PC.<-!> See the file OLE.TXT included in this package.
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@Standard Text@<:I0,720,0,0><:#852,9025>To install the tools simply open AmiPro and Tools, Macros, PlayBack from the menu bar. Use the directory browser in the dialog box find the file SETUP.SMM in the directory that AmiWeb was unzipped in and run it.
@Standard Text@<:I0,720,0,0><:#852,9025>In the dialog that appears you may wish to alter the directory that the documents are copied to and verify that the icons directory is correct (specified under Tools, User Setup, Paths) but the others entries should remain untouched on most installations.
@Standard Text@<:I0,720,0,0><:#284,9025>Press OK and the installation will take place leaving AmiWeb ready to roll!
@Standard Text@<:s><:I0,0,0,0><:#284,9025>NOTE: This automatic installation should work regardless of where your AmiPro directory is.
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@H3@<:I0,0,0,0><:#422,9025><-!>
@H3@<:I0,0,0,0><:#422,9025>2. What is AmiWeb?
@Standard Text@<:I0,0,0,0><:#1136,9025> AmiWeb is a utility for producing HTML documents from AmiPro. It is written with the idea of creating totally new documents from scratch but it may be used to create HTML from existing .SAM documents. (See Section 5). AmiWeb uses two main things for form
atting the .SAM documents to be processed correctly by the converter.
@Standard Text@<:I0,0,0,0><:#1988,9025> Firstly, the paragraph styles which define the layout of the text. These allow the use of different layout formats such as H1, H2, PreFormatted Text, Definitions and their text, different Lists, etc. These give the main layout information for the documen
t. NOTE: The converter will only accept the paragraph styles that appear in the _HTML.STY stylesheet. Any other paragraph style will cause the converter to abort with an error message. This is the main reason that it is better to create a document for HT
ML initially rather than altering an existing one, you don't have to change any paragraph styles.
@Standard Text@<:I0,0,0,0><:#568,9025> Secondly, red text in the document is left as it is. Links and anchors are defined in this manner as well as a number of other HTML tags. These are described in Section 3.
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@Standard Text@<:I0,0,0,0><:#568,9025> Once a document is written, it is simply a matter of converting the .sam document to HTML format which is easily done from within AmiPro, as described later.
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@H3@<:I0,0,0,0><:#422,9025>3. Using the Tools
@Standard Text@<:I0,0,0,0><:#568,9025> From the AmiPro File menu select New, this will bring up the Style Sheet dialog box. From the list select the HTML style sheet, this has the description:
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@Standard Text@<:I0,0,0,0><:#284,9025> HTML - Used for creating HTML documents
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@Standard Text@<:s><:I0,0,0,0><:#284,9025> or is listed by its filename:
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@Standard Text@<:I0,0,0,0><:#284,9025> _HTML.STY
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@Standard Text@<:s><:#284,9025> Before clicking OK ensure that the "Run Macro" and "With Contents" boxes are checked.
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@Standard Text@<:#852,9025> After a short delay, as the initialisation macros are processed, the blank page appears and you should find that a new item is added to the toolbar with the name HTML. This has a number of items in it most of which are for creating the document featur
@Standard Text@<:I0,720,720,0><:#852,9025>Highlight the text that you wish to attach the link to and select this option, you will then be asked for the URL of the link. Once you enter this data the anchor is added to the text.
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@Standard Text@<:I0,720,720,0><:#284,9025><+!>Add NAME Anchor (Hotkey CTRL+SHIFT+N)<-!>
@Standard Text@<:I0,720,720,0><:#1136,9025>This is for placing labels in the text so you can access a section of an HTML document. Highlight the text that you wish to attach the anchor to and select this option, you will then be asked for a name for the anchor which will be added to the text.
@Standard Text@<:I0,720,720,0><:#1420,9025>This is for placing images in an HTML document. Select this option and you will be asked for the URL of the image, you may select the alignment of the image with the text and add text that will be displayed on browsers that do not support images. You may
also indicate whether the image is an image map. The image will not be displayed in AmiPro.
@Standard Text@<:s><:I0,720,720,0><:#568,9025>This places the <<NOBR<;><</NOBR<;> tokens around the highlighted text which indicate that the line must not be in this section.
@Standard Text@<:I0,720,720,0><:#852,9025>This places the <<WBR<;> token in the text which indicates that the line may be broken at this point in the middle of a NOBR section. It may also be used anywhere in the text to indicate where a word may be broken.
@Standard Text@<:I0,720,720,0><:#852,9025>A dialog box appears for you to enter your name, e-mail address and home page. This information will be added into the text at the cursor position with a link to your home page from your name. Your e-mail address will be in ADDRESS format.
@Standard Text@<:s><:I0,720,720,0><:#1420,9025>This inserts a note in the text at the insertion point. This must then be edited by double clicking on the box that appears to indicate the note. These notes may also be added by selecting Edit/Insert/Notes which is possibly the preferable option as you a
re then allowed to edit the note immediately - this is not possible with macros for some reason best known to Lotus.
@Standard Text@<:I0,720,720,0><:#568,9025>Comments appearing in the main body of text will appear in the HTML document where they are inserted in the AmiPro document.
@Standard Text@<:I0,720,720,0><:#568,9025>Comments appearing in the header will appear after <<HTML<;> but before <<BODY<;> in the destination document.
@Standard Text@<:#1988,9025>This allows the user to select a different paragraph style. These styles are used by AmiPro to mimic the display of a browser and are used by the converter to set the desired style in the HTML document. There is the standard text style used for most of th
e body text of the HTML document, the six heading styles H1-H6, three depths of lists, number lists, directory lists and menu lists. There are also Program Code, Block Quote, and PreFormatted styles and Definition and Defn Text styles. Note that Definitio
n and Defn Text styles alternate between new lines.
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@Standard Text@<:s><:#284,9025><+!><+#><++>Text Styles <-+><-#><+#>and<-#><+#><++> Text Effects<-+><-#><-!>
@Standard Text@<:s><:#568,9025>These simply add appropriate markers around the selected text so that the desired effect is entered into the document.
@Standard Text@<:#568,9025>If the file has not been given a filename then before anything the Save dialog box will come up for you to save the source file.
@Standard Text@<:#852,9025>Next, another dialog comes up which prompts you for a destination directory and a filename for the converted file. There is also a check box that determines whether single carriage returns will be converted to <<BR<;>s or <<P<;>s.
@Standard Text@<:#852,9025>Enter or verify these and press OK and the file will be converted. This dialog box may be disabled after the first conversion by selecting 'Don't show Convert dialog box' in the Options dialog box.
@Standard Text@<:s><:#852,9025>Any errors from the conversion will be displayed in a window. Because of the way the file is converted, these error messages are unfortunately not extremely helpful but they give you some idea as to what is wrong with the file.
@Standard Text@<:s><:#284,9025>NOTE: The source file is saved every time the file is converted.
@Standard Text@<:#568,9025>This dialog box is mainly for NetScape extensions but it also includes the CheckBox for disabling the Convert File dialog box.
@Standard Text@<:#568,9025>There are three main other parts; the HR extensions, the BR extension. These are the values that will be used when the NetScape options are enabled.
@Standard Text@<:#568,9025>The third is the CheckBox to enable NetScape Extensions and this enables the BR and HR extras and an extended options dialog box for images.
@Standard Text@<:s><:#284,9025>For an explanation of these please see:
@Standard Text@<:s><:#284,9025><:f240,2Times New Roman,255,0,0>http://home.mcom.com/home/services_docs/html-extensions.html<:f>
@Standard Text@<:s><:#284,9025><:f240,2Times New Roman,255,0,0>
@Standard Text@<:#568,9025>Anchors and other bracketed '<< <;>' items MUST appear in red or the brackets will be converted to their HTML codes << becomes < and <;> becomes > .
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@H3@<:#422,9025>4. Current NetScape capabilities
@Standard Text@<:#568,9025>I am working to make AMIWEB capable of using the extensions to HTML that are included in NetScape.
@List@<:#284,9025>Fontsize processing to allow variable font sizes in documents.
@List@<:s><:#284,9025>All the new image attributes.
@List@<:s><:#284,9025>The new <<HR<;> and <<BR<;> attributes.
@List@<:#284,9025>The new elements <<NOBR<;> and <<WBR<;> for what they're worth.
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@Standard Text@<:s><:#568,9025>I have no intention of adding the following due to the difficulties with representing them in AmiPro:
@List@<:s><:#284,9025>Different bullet types in lists
@List@<:#284,9025>The initial count value in ordered lists and the counting format i.e.. 1,2,3 or i, ii, iii etc.
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@H3@<:#422,9025>5. Converting existing documents to AmiWeb
@H3@<:s><:#422,9025>documents
@Standard Text@<:#568,9025> To convert an existing document to a form that amiweb can process load your document then from the style option select 'Use another style' and select the HTML style.
@Standard Text@<:#852,9025> The next thing to do is to select Macros from the Tools option and Playback. Select the macro called HTMLMACS.SMM and run it, this will set up the macros in the document for future use.
@Standard Text@<:s><:#1136,9025> Once you have done all this, you must go through the document changing any Paragraph Styles that are not included in the HTML style sheet to ones that are. To do this simply highlight the areas to change and select the appropriate paragraph style from the
menu activated by clicking on the button at the bottom left of the AmiPro screen.
@Standard Text@<:s><:#852,9025>On converting the document, any styles that are not recognised will send up an error message naming the offending styles. Search through the document for these styles and change the occurrences to acceptable styles.
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@H3@<:#422,9025>6. Font sizes
@Standard Text@<:#852,9025> AmiWeb converts font sizes to <<FONT SIZE=#<;> used by a number of browsers using the following table with the exception of the fonts in headers which I have disabled AmiWeb from altering.
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@Standard Text@<:#284,9025><+#>AMIPRO font size in Points<-#> <+#>HTML FONT SIZE<-#>
@Standard Text@<:s><:R><:#284,9025>Not exactly evenly spaced but that's life!
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@H3@<:#422,9025>7. Background Images and Colour Changes
@Standard Text@<:#568,9025>The latest versions of HTML include options to change the default text and background colours and to allow you to specify an image to use as a background to your web page.
@Standard Text@<:#284,9025>To use these features select HTML, Set Background etc. and a dialog box will appear.
@Standard Text@<:#852,9025>The top five entries are for colour values which can be in two formats. The lower box is to enter the URL of an image you would like to use as a background. Any empty fields will be ignored and so will not affect your document.
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@Standard Text@<:#852,9025>The colour fields can either be of the form #rrggbb where rr is a hex value for the red component between 00 and ff, gg is the green component and bb the blue one. This is the HTML standard. So cyan would be #00ffff for example.
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@Standard Text@<:#1420,9025>The second format allows you to use colour names such as RED, Black, blue, WhItE and is case insensitive! The name is looked up in the file AMIHTML.INI (which the setup program places into your WINDOWS directory) and the corresponding value is placed into
the HTML file. The number of colours supported is pretty low so far, please feel free to add to these in this file and I'd love to receive e-mail for more colours to add to the distribution files. Thanks.
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@H3@8. Using Tables
@Standard Text@You may now add fairly basic tables to your HTML documents using AmiWeb. Simply add a table to the AmiPro document and it will be converted into HTML. To add a table, use Tools, Tables from the main menu bar. Alternatively, use the Table icon now on the
HTML smarticon bar.
@Standard Text@To add a title to your table, simply add a footnote (Tools, Footnotes) whilst the cursor is on the table. Type into the footnote and this will appear as a title above the table.
@Standard Text@To modify the table settings in HTML, add another footnote and add the settings you require, for example, if you wish to use BORDER = 6, simply type this into the second footnote.
@Standard Text@AmiWeb will always use the first footnote for a caption if it exists, it will use the second to modify the TABLE parameters. If you wish to modify the parameters but not have a title, simply create two footnotes leaving the first one blank.
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@Standard Text@To specify a header for a table entry rather than just a normal entry, underline the entry. To right or centre align any of the entries, simply use the text align options on the entries you want aligned.
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@Standard Text@See DEMO.SAM for use.
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@H5@<:#360,9025>Any bugs, comments:
@Standard Text@<:s><:#852,9025>Please inform me of any bugs you find or any comments you have to make about these tools. I cannot guarantee that any recommendations will be followed up but I will endeavour to fix any bugs.
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@Standard Text@<:#284,9025>e-mail to sbx@cs.nott.ac.uk 31/3/95
