This list can come in handy to quickly solve a problem. If you have trouble with something, read through this before mailing me, most likely the truth is in here!
If that's not the case, you can always mail me at: athomas@kagi.com
FAQ:
•Q: Gee, I like this program and I wanna keep it! Is it for free?
-A: No. It is NOT free, but not expensive either: it costs only US$ 15. I don't ask this because I'm greedy, but because I won't be motivated to continue developing this software when I get the feeling that nobody appreciates my work. So if you decide to continue using this program, click the "Register online" link or open the "Register" application, fill in the required data, and send the output to sales@kagi.com. You can pay by credit card, cash, …
Remember: you only need to do this ONCE, and then you're registered for the rest of your life!
•Q: Why is this program so cheap?
-A: To ease the otherwise very difficult psychological threshold of spending so much of your hard earned money. In other words: if you like this program, there is no good reason not to pay.
•Q: When I apply fonts or styles from the Font menus, why do my changes disappear as soon as I save my file or perform certain other actions?
-A: The Font & Style menus have no effect on the actual contents of the HTML file, and are not saved with the document (this would require the use of a resource fork, which cannot be used on non-Mac OS systems like most web servers). These menus can be useful, however, to prepare the text for printing or just to make it easier for yourself while editing text.
•Q: When I view my files in my browser, some characters are replaced by odd signs and squares. What's going on here?
-A: You probably used some characters which have a binary value above 127 (like à, é, ü, §, …) and saved your file in "Macintosh" format. The Mac OS uses a different character set than the ISO-8859-1 set, which is the standard for webpages. Hence, you should always save your webpages in Windows or UNIX format because they do use this character set. If you really need to save your files in Macintosh format, and need special characters, you must convert them into codes (like à, é, …) To do this, make sure the option "Use character codes" is checked in the “Editor” preferences. You can then convert any special characters in a text, by selecting it and clicking the "HTML-ize" (<->) button in the “Objects & Tags” palette.
•Q: Sometimes an operation (like saving) doesn't complete, and after that, parts of the editor disappear, or the entire screen even goes blank, although I don't get an error message.
-A: This is because TagWriter is running so low on memory that it can't save your file, or can't even draw the interface anymore. (Error messages don't appear when you have clicked a button in a palette, only when you choose a normal menu command. Try choosing "Save" from the File menu and you'll probably see a "not enough memory" message.) See the next Q&A for instructions:
•Q: I get the message "There is not enough memory to …", what can I do about this?
-A: This means that there is not enough memory allocated to TagWriter, or there was not enough free memory available at the moment when you launched it (it will then get what's left).
In the first case, select the TagWriter application in the Finder, choose "Get Info" and increase the number at the bottom right of the info window (in Mac OS 8.5 & higher, choose "Memory" from the pop-up menu and indrease the "Preferred" size). In the second case, close the RAM-swallowing application(s).
You need to quit and re-launch TagWriter for both these operations to have effect.
•Q: The size of the program changes as I work with it. Is this normal?
-A: Don't worry, you are not being attacked by viruses or so. This program is based on HyperCard, and it's normal for HyperCard stacks that they build up "free space". This space can be eliminated by choosing "Compact stack" from the File menu. The best time to do this, is when you are about to quit the application.
•Q: Do I need OS 8 to use the 'contextual popUp-menus'?
-A: Nope, it works on every Mac which has a 'ctrl'-key that has not been jammed while playing Marathon or short-circuited by spilled coffee.
•Q: I get the message "A HyperCard field can't hold more than 30,000 characters" or "Can't type more than 30,000 characters in a field", what's this?
-A: This is a limitation of HyperCard, and the only way to solve this problem is to split up your file into two or more parts and use the "Embed File" command in the "HTML Tools" menu. Embedding files can be useful in other situations too. Read the Help file for more information about this.
•Q: When I try to insert a tag into a certain piece of text, nothing happens, although the selection doesn't start or end within a tag.
-A: This can happen if the "<" or ">" characters are in that piece of text. These must always be converted to "<" and ">" respectively, which can be done by clicking the "HTML-ize" (<->) button in the Objects & Tags palette.
•Q: My Mac sometimes freezes when opening a file.
-A: This is caused by an incompatibility between Mac OS Easy Open and HyperCard in Mac OS 8 or 8.1. To solve this problem, turn off the option "Convert text documents" in the Mac OS Easy Open control panel.
•Q: Some palettes seem invisible, nothing happens when I try to open them!
-A: You are most likely working on a small monitor, while the previous user of the stack has put the palettes somewhere out of your screen's range. So the palettes are there, but you can't reach them. How to solve this: choose "Full ButtonBar" from the "Palettes" menu and then "Normal" or "No ButtonBar": all the palettes should now be at the top of your screen. Or: re-install the program from the original file.
•Q: When I resize the window, it suddenly switches to “standard 9" size”. What's up?
-A: This may happen if you have started up the program with a small window: you may not be able to make the window bigger than that (a memory limitation: larger windows demand more memory). So just make the window as large as you want, quit TagWriter (if necessary, increase its memory partition) and re-open it.
•Q: The colors I picked in the color picker look different in my browser.
-A: This occurs when your monitor is set to 256 colors: when you pick the color in the Color picker, it will look correct, but when you open it in your browser, it is "rounded" to the nearest color available. The colors should look correct with your monitor set at thousands or millions of colors. If you are concerned with your page's layout, only use ‘web-savvy’ colors, which have a color code which only contains 00,33,66,99,CC or FF. To 'round' any color to such a color, select its code, hold down the mouse on the "Color code" button while pressing the Command key and choose "Round to web-color". In Mac OS 8 there is a special HTML color picker.
•Q: It often takes long before the pop-up menus for certain tags, like "A" or "SPAN", show up, even in simple files.
-A: You probably know the "Apple menu options" control panel which adds those handy hierarchical menus to the Apple menu. Some people just drop an alias to their hard disk in it, or to a folder with lots of frequently edited files, like webpages. The problem is that, as soon as one of those files is edited, the entire menu is re-built, and this can take very long. Simply reading such a file can cause a noticeable delay too.
If these delays bother you but you really can't miss those aliases, check the "Don't look in external files" option in TagWriter's preferences. Otherwise, remove all aliases to hard disks or large folders from the Apple menu; you'll notice that everything will run much smoother if you do.
•Q: I am a HyperCard freak and I'd like to take a look at this program's scripts. How can I hack it?
-A: Very simple: if you try to hack it, you will undoubtedly damage it and it'll be ripe for the Trash. Anyhow, you'd have a hard time understanding the scripts because they hardly have comments (because of tight memory conditions). A much easier, cleaner and completer way is to send me a little mail at dr.lex@cryogen.com and kindly ask for the scripts. You need to be a registered user for this, however. In that case you'll get them for free, with comments and information, within a few days, and I won't become angry at you as I would in the first case.
•Q: I hate a certain software company whose only concern is making as much money as possible and eventually acquire an absolute monopoly, by selling tasteless-designed operating systems and ill-structured programs stuffed with bugs and useless gadgets which can't even be removed! What can I do about this?
-A: Take your riot-gun out of the cupboard, and go out in a blaze of glory. Your primary target is a nerd wearing glasses and having lots of money. I know, your chance of success is about 0.001%, but if you don't try, you can't win. Of course a non-violent way of protest will have much larger chances of success.
•Q: Why is the sky blue?
-A: Because when a beam of sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the beam's photons collide with O2 and N2 molecules, which are most abundant in the atmosphere. The photons are absorbed by the atoms' electrons and then re-emitted as polarized photons in directions perpendicular to the beam's direction, a process called dispersion. Because photons with a higher energy, as are blue light photons, are dispersed more easily than low-energy photons, like in red light, more blue than red light is dispersed. This makes us see a blue sky and a red sun during sundawn and sunset. … But aren't we disgressing a bit?
