Re: Hmm, studying HTML to weberize SPAG.


Thu, 21 Sep 1995 02:20:37 GMT

whizzard@uclink.berkeley.edu (Gerry Kevin Wilson) wrote:

>Ok, I'm gonna HTMLize SPAG, so someone tell me where to go, what to read.

Yay!
Well, to make a biased but at least arguably correct statement, since
SPAG is potentially read by users of a quadzillion different
platforms, you probably don't want to use Netscape Enhanced HTML.
Therefore, the following documents all relate to vanilla HTML guides.

Basically,

HTML was originally conceived of as a "presentation-independent"
standard for providing information in a friendly manner. The current
standard version is HTML v2.0, although you will occasionally find
viewers (such as Cello for Win3.1, I believe), that are HTML v1.0.
HTML 3.0 is not yet implemented.

The amazingly common standard text is "A Beginner's Guide to HTML,"
which is available everywhere but specifically at
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html.
This is (obviously) NCSA's guide; it's good, easy to use, and provides
virtually no information on the more advanced features.

A better, more complete work is Werbach's Bare Bones Guide to HTML,
but this is, properly speaking, a reference work and not a tutorial.
You may well consult it often, however. The URL is
http://www.access.digex.net/~werbach/barebones.html.

All HTML files are plain text files with special plain text "markup
tags;" you can simply create them in emacs (I'm sorry. your favorite
editor . . . ) and then load or display them with any client. Since
clients differ, however - (some don't display graphics, different
window sizes, etc), check your HTML with more than one viewer on more
than one platform before declaring it finished. The Unix text-based
viewer Lynx is commonly available and particularly unforgiving, so if
it's okay there, it'll be okay everywhere. Good luck.

/jesse