How To Create An HTML Document

Documents on the Internet's World Wide Web all use a technology known as HyperText Markup Language. HTML is a technology in progress. It's only been around for a few years but it's already in its third revision, HTML-3. The technology started as a simple way to send text from one computer platform and have it interpreted on any other platform. It has evolved into a medium that can send not only text but pictures, sounds, and animation. With the advance in HTML technology has come a spate of tools that can handle the technology. Foremost among these tools are Web editors and Web browsers. Web editors let the developer create HTML documents. Web browsers let others view these documents.

There are a dozen or so Web editors on the shareware and commercial market. The one that I prefer (just because I took a class in how to use it) is called HotDog version 2.5.3. The typical price for a good Web editor is about $100.00 give or take $50.00.

If you don't have a Web editor, any good text editor will do. The advantage to using a Web editor is that it contains a lot of "macros", hot keys, and tool bars built-in that make it easier to embed special tags in the text. Without these built-in typing aids, you can count on doing a lot of extra typing and making a lot more mistakes.

Whether you use a Web editor or your preferred editor, you begin a HTML document by typing in your text.. That's the easy part. Then, to make the text appear bold when it will appear on the Web, you have to surround the text with "tags". For example this text appears as bold is tagged as <strong> this text appears as bold </strong>. There are similar tags for creating italicized text and countless other tags for such things as

Centered Text

There are even special tags for linking text to other parts of a document, embedding pictures in your document, creating tables and fill-in-the-blank forms, and so on.

If you want to see what an original HTML document looks like, just load this file, called HOWTO.HTM, into a standard text editor or point at the file with Filer and press F8. You'll undoubtedly agree that "what you see is NOT what you get." Sure, you can read the text and even see the Hypertext Markup tags, but to get the full effect of the document, you also need a Web Browser ( sometimes called a Web Reader).

There are about half a dozen Web browsers on the market. The most popular is Netscape's Navigator. It sells for around $50. Microsoft is giving away its Internet Explorer browser in an attempt to knock Navigator out of first place.

Tools For the Palmtop

PalEdit

There are currently no Web editors for the HP Palmtop, however Memo is always available. And there are several, good text editors that you can use, for example VDE, TSE(Jr), and Freyja, just to name a few.

Andreas Garzotto, who has previously given HP Palmtop users his HV (Hypertext Viewer) program, has recently created a fantastic text editor called PalEdit. Andreas used the Palmtop Application Library (PAL) to give PalEdit the look and feel of the Palmtop's built-in applications. Everything about this editor is "just right", including the price: it's free.

Here are a two screen shots of PalEdit. The first one shows the opening screen. If you start PalEdit (PE) without specifying a file name, it will display a "pick-list" from which you can load any one of 10 files that you may have been working on previously.

The second picture shows the first screen in the PE.DOC (Readme) file.

PalEdit has many features that will let you work on text documents, including HTML documents and computer programming code. Here are a few of them.

The feature that caught my immediate attention was the find function. To find a word, you simply press the F4 function key and start typing the word you're looking for. PalEdit does an incremental search. The cursor hops to the most likely word as you type. This usually lets you find the word by the time you've typed in the first three or four letters. And, believe me, you won't lose sight of the cursor. It literally explodes on the screen to get your attention.

PalEdit's help is not context sensitive. The help file is an ASCII text file that is loaded into a special section of the editor. That's great, since it means I can add all the code for the HTML tags to the file and have that help available at the press of the F1 (Help) key. And, since PalEdit has a keyboard macro feature, I can add the most frequently used tags to make PalEdit behave like a Web editor. Neat!

Hypertext Viewer (HV)

The other side of the HTML coin is a Web reader. Palmtop users have had their own Web reader, HV, for almost a year. Recently HV has been upgraded to make it conform more closely with the current HTML standards. It still works well on the HP Palmtop and makes it easy to use your pocket PC as an Internet off-line reader.

HV Showing the Opening Screen of This Document

You can capture text and pictures from any number of Web sites on your desktop or on your Palmtop, if you're using Nettamer or WWW/LX. Once the files are on the Palmtop you can disconnect from the Internet and take them with you to read at spare moments.

HV Showing the "Tools" Screen of This Document

Since most of the documents on the World Wide Web contain graphics designed for machines with 640 X 480 VGA color monitors, the HP Palmtop will always have trouble displaying these high resolution graphics. HV lets you shut off the graphics and speed up the reception of text. Alternatively you can use an external graphics interpreter such as PICEM to display those graphics that HV can't handle.

Combining PalEdit and Hypertext Viewer

To create your own HTML development environment, you can install PE as the editor of choice in the HV configuration file. Then, you can run HV and view an HTML document. When you want to switch from viewing to editing, just press the F3 (Edit) key and PalEdit will automatically load the source document and let you make additions or corrections. When you've finished editing just quit PalEdit and you'll return to HV where you can immediately view the results. It's all very slick.

Producing Pictures on the Palmtop and Desktop

One of the trickier tasks in creating an HTML document is getting graphics that look good and communicate. The task becomes even trickier when you're dealing with two different platforms: a high speed desktop with SVGA monitor and a low speed Palmtop with CGA grey-scale display. To do the job, you need a panoply of tools on both the desktop and the HP Palmtop.

Graphics Tools That Work

and Some that Don't

To produce the Palmtop screen shots in this document, I tried using a program called GRABBER. Grabber is a TSR program that works on the Palmtop and grabs a screen whenever you press a "hot-key". The program stores the resulting image in an executable file. Grabber works as advertised. However, its companion conversion tool, GR2PCX has some problems. For one thing, it converts an IMAGE.EXE file into an IMAGE.PCX file. You still have to convert the IMAGE.PCX file into an IMAGE.GIF file so that it can be interpreted by an HTML reader. Furthermore GR2PCX only works with an EGA/VGA monitor and produces 640 X 350 shots of what was originally a 640 X 200 screen. That would be OK but such files present the HP Palmtop with problems. When used with a GIF interpreter called PICEM (v.3.2) the resulting presentation goes beyond the bottom of the screen. In short GRABBER is not really suitable for this kind of task on the Palmtop.

The preferred method for creating 640 X 200 screen dumps is to use a program called GEMCAP, another TSR which captures a screen on the Palmtop and stores it as an .IMG file. (Ventura Publisher uses the .IMG graphics format.)

To convert .IMG files to .GIF and .EXE files, you need another shareware program called Graphics Workshop (DOS version). The older versions of this program work on the Palmtop and let you create self-displaying files as well as reverse image GIF files. The reverse image files are needed if you plan to view the pictures on a desktop computer.

Finally, on the desktop, you'll need a good graphics program, such as Paint Shop Pro. PSP will let you "tweak" any GIF files that have been created on the Palmtop. There seems to be an occasional problem with GIF files and the PICEM program. PICEM will display a GIF file on the Palmtop. However, the same PICEM program displaying the same GIF file on a desktop can sometimes cause the whole computer to crash and burn. If you load the "bad" GIF file into Paint Shop Pro and then save it back to disk, the problem goes away.

HV Showing the Final Screen of This Document

Summing Up

Creating HTML documents is not something to be undertaken lightly. The current "state-of-the-art" demands a lot of software and hardware. I've tried to give you some idea of what works and what doesn't.

Producing an HTML document is also very time-consuming and demands a good feel for using text and pictures to communicate an idea. I'm not sure that HTML and the World Wide Web are a great communication medium. It may develop into something unique and powerful or it may go the way of the CB radio. Time will tell.

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