by Peter Moretti
One-page documents are easily kept up-to-date using a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) word processor. Documents of more than about four pages benefit from computer formatting, so that later changes will be incorporated seamlessly into the text. In order to avoid lay-out errors (such as a title on the bottom of a page in a print document), it is not enough to capitalize or bold or center the section titles; instead, the computer must be informed that the phrase is a title. For example, the subtitle above is marked and bracketed, in the LaTeX typesetting language:
\sectionhead{Document Maintenance}
or in HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML):
<h2>Document Maintenance</h2>where the command with the slash serves as the end-bracket. A separate "style sheet" tells the computer whether to capitalize or bold or center all the subtitles. In other words, authoring the content is separated from editing the lay-out, as it is in book publishing.
As outlined by the Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML) specification, and implemented in HTML, a document will have up to six levels of titles and subtitles (<h1> through <h6>), as well as numbered or bulleted lists and sub-lists, etc. Paragraphs of body-text are bracketed between <p> and </p>. Extra spaces or carriage returns in the HTML code don't show up in the formatted page: to start a new paragraph, you have to insert "</p><p>" into the code. These few marks are sufficient for the substance of most web pages: if you know this much, you can add to existing web pages!
The content of an HTML page is always bracketed between <body> and </body>. It is generally <head>ed by Front Matter which gives the title of the web page, as read by search engines. Head and body together are bracketed by <html> and </html>. At the top there may be a statement telling the version of HTML used, for example:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W#C/DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3c.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">Since these items are already in place in an existing web page, you don't need to modify them when updating a page.
LaTeX code can be generated using Scientific WorkPlace. For HTML there are a number of good programs; at FCC we currently have Expression Web installed on several of the computers. To use it, Peter has to assign you a username and a password on the Yahoo Small Business server. Since our website "fcc-stw.org" has "Front-Page Extensions" installed, Expression Web can communicate with it through the HTTP protocol. When you have a username and password, start up Expression Web and "Open Site" "http://fcc-stw.org". Responding to the dialog boxes will take you to the web page and let you open any of the HTML (.htm or .html) documents. Be careful, you are operating directly on the live web site!
There are three views to choose from at the bottom of the page: Design, Split, and Code.
Any changes you make don't get transferred to the web server until you "Save" the file; when you are finished, remember to "Close Site" as well. Check your results: you're not finished until you've looked at your work with Internet Explorer and/or other browsers: a simple typo can have surprising effects!
HTML commands are embedded inline within a string of ordinary alphanumeric characters. To produce special characters such as "©", you use the command "©", which starts with an ampersand and ends with a semicolon. You can find lists of other special characters in HTML manuals, for example for an extra space between words.
Since & and < and > are reserved for HTML commands, we need to call for them as special characters when we want to use them in the text:
| Symbol | Code |
|---|---|
| & | & |
| < | < |
| > | > |
| " | " |
You can make clickable links using the format
<a href="http://www.fcc-stw.org/index.html">Church Website</a>When the user clicks on "Church Website", the browser takes him to the quoted address.
The address above is an absolute address. When you are moving around among pages on your your own site, it is better to use relative addresses; the root directory is "../" and the homepage is "../index.html".
Caution: Surprisingly, for some calls, directory- and file-names are case sensitive: be sure you write them exactly as listed!
So far, we've dealt with HTML (.htm or .html) documents, but browsers can also call up documents in other formats; all you have to do is copy them to the website and link to them from an HTML document.
For complex documents initially generated for printing on paper, the preferred file format is Portable Document Format (.pdf), because it saves simple graphics in a vectorial format which is more compact than bit-map formats. For simple text, word processor formats, preferably Rich Text Format (.rtf), are acceptable and can be read by most computers.
The preferred format for photographs is JPEG (.jpg); for simple logos it is GIF (.gif): there are examples on our home page.
In the FCC offices, we have simple plastic "HTML Guides" which show the commands for making bulleted lists, etc. - but since they were printed, it has been decided that using lower case for commands is preferable to upper case. For Expression Web, there are some user's manuals explaining how to manipulate photographs and other images.