W e b W r i t e r / 2

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Introduction

WebWriter/2 is an HTML editor designed and written for OS/2.

Currently WebWriter/2 directly supports the creation of HTML version 2.0 documents. It also includes the capability for the user to define tags which are not currently supported, allowing users to include tags from more recent HTML specifications. It is intended that the final 1.0 release will include support for both HTML 3.0 and the Netscape extensions to HTML. At least some knowledge of HTML is assumed and no syntax checking of documents is performed.

This is a beta release of WebWriter/2. You may freely use and distribute this program until the release of version 1.0 which will be released as shareware. Version 1.0 will include additional enhancements as well as a more complete help system.

Thank you for trying WebWriter/2. I hope you find it both useful and easy to use. If you have suggestions for enhancements or useability improvements, or if you discover defects in WebWriter/2, please contact me through one of the methods listed in the Getting Technical Support section below.

WebWriter/2 is implemented in REXX using Watcom International Corporation's VX-REXX.

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Installation

Prerequisites:

1. You must have installed OS/2 REXX support.
2. You must have the file vrobj.dll.

   If the .zip file containing this file did not include vrobj.dll, you can retrieve vrobj21c.zip from http://www.watcom.on.ca/fix_vxrexx/vrobj21c.zip. It is also available via anonymous ftp from ftp.watcom.on.ca/pub/bbs/wrexxpf.

Installing WebWriter/2:

1. Install OS/2 REXX support, using the OS/2 Selective Install utility, if you have not already done so.
2. Unzip ww2_09b2.zip into a temporary directory.
3. Make sure that either:
   • vrobj.dll exists in a directory in your LIBPATH.

   or

   • You have the file vrobj.dll in the directory that you unzipped ww2_09b2.zip into.
4. Run Install.EXE. This will install WebWriter/2 into a directory that you choose and create a WebWriter/2 program object on your OS/2 Desktop.

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Using WebWriter/2

WebWriter/2 allows you to create HTML documents from scratch or to markup existing text documents. You may also preview documents using either IBM's WebExplorer or another WWW client including Netscape. If you use IBM's WebExplorer as your WWW client you can use WebWriter/2 as your viewer for HTML document source. To do this,

1. Choose Configure/Viewers from the WebExplorer menu bar.
2. Select viewer type "Editor for HTML Source".
3. Specify WebWrite.EXE, including the path to it, as the viewer program. You can also select it using the "Browse..." button.

WebWriter/2 uses a MSDI (Multiple Single Document Interface) method of editing multiple documents. You can open as many WebWriter/2 windows as you want as long as you can keep track of what you are doing. To help manage the open documents you may wish to display the WebWriter/2 - Window list. You can do this by selecting it from the Windows menu or from the OS/2 window list. Clicking mouse button 2 on the WebWriter/2 - Window list will bring up a context menu of options.

To insert HTML tags, select the desired tag from the Tags menu. Tags which have additonal or optional elements will present the user with a dialog prompting for the necessary information. Additional tags may be defined and inserted by selecting Tags/More tags... . Special characters can be selected from the Characters menu or from the Character entities dialog which is displayed by selecting Characters/More characters... . When inserting HTML tags, selected text will be wrapped by the tag if it is two sided. One sided tags will be inserted before selected text. Character entities will be inserted before selected text.

If you are not familiar with HTML you may wish to obtain one of the many books available on this topic. "Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week" by Laura Lemay ( SAMS Publishing, 1995 ) is a good book for beginners. By the time you read this "Teach Yourself More Web Publishing with HTML in a Week" by Laura Lemay ( SAMS Publishing, 1995 ) should be on the shelves. There are also many WWW sites which provide up to date HTML documentation and examples. Although these are too numerous to list here, one good site is http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html. You can refer to the html20.htm file included with this .ZIP for basic HTML information.

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Changes since beta 1

Fixes

1. A problem with WebWriter/2 locking up on startup including locking up the entire OS/2 system has been fixed.
2. A problem with the edit window contents sometimes not redisplaying properly when a document was inserted or opened has been fixed.
3. Problems with locating the exact position of text in the edit window during find and replace operations have, I believe, been resolved by the Patch level C version of VROBJ.DLL and minor code changes.
4. Many annoying little problems which somehow manged to slip through to the first beta release.

New in beta 2:

1. You can now define and insert your own tags using the Tag manager dialog. See Tags/More tags... below for a more complete description.
2. Enhanced drag & drop support.
3. Enhanced support for non-English characters.
4. Multiple preview applications may now be configured.
5. You may now, optionally, display a status bar which will display hint text describing menu items. For tags and character entities the element inserted when the menu option is selected is displayed.
6. You can now select the printer you wish to print to including direct printing to an LPT device using the OS/2 print command. Direct to LPT printing can be useful if you are having trouble printing to an OS/2 printer. This can also allow 2 & 4 up printing if you have a utility that supports this.
7. WebWriter/2 now uses the C level patch version of VROBJ.DLL.

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Menu Options

Following is an item by item description of the WebWriter/2 menu options. Most of the "File" & "Edit" menu options should be familiar to OS/2 users.

File menu

• New

  
  This option will close the current document if any and provide an empty edit window to begin a new document. If a document is open and changes have been made the user will be prompted to save the open document. If a template is specified in the settings and "Use template" is selected the new document will be based on the template document. See the Settings/Template section for more details.

• Open...

  
  Allows the user to select an existing document to edit.

• Save

  
  Saves the current document.

• Save as...

  
  Prompts the user for a path and file name and saves the current document to the path and file name specified.

• Close

  
  Closes the current document. The user is prompted to save the document if changes have been made.

• Import...

  
  Allows the user to select a document to import into the current document. The selected document will be inserted into the current document at the cursor location.

• Copy to...

  
  Copies the current document to a file specified by the user.

• Rename...

  
  Allows the user to rename the current document.

• Delete

  
  Deletes the current document.

• Preview

  • Primary preview application

  • Secondary preview application

    
    View the current document using the WWW client specified in the "Preview application" on the Preview page of the WebWriter/2 settings notebook. See the Settings/Preview section for more details.

  • Other...

    
    Select an application to preview the document in.

• Print

  • Document

    
    Prints the current document.

  • Selected text

    
    Prints the selected text only.

• Printer setup...

  
  Allows you to select a printer and specify print options. If you are using a Postscript printer or if you experience problems printing, you may wish to select 'Use OS/2 PRINT command' as your printer and specify the LPT device via the Job data dialog.

• Exit WebWriter/2

  
  This will close all open WebWriter/2 windows. If you just want to close the current document window use Close from the System menu or double click the System menu icon.

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Edit menu

• Undo

  
  This will undo the last change to the document.

• Cut

  
  Cuts the selected text to the Clipboard.

• Copy

  
  Copies the selected text to the Clipboard.

• Paste

  
  Inserts the Clipboard contents.

• Delete

  
  Deletes the selected text.

• Select all

  
  Selects the entire document.

• Find...

  
  Displays the Find dialog. The Find dialog allows the user to search for and replace text in the current document. The search parameters are controlled by selecting the check boxes on the Find dialog. The action performed (i.e., Find, Change, Change all) is determined by the button selected on the Find dialog.

  

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Tags menu

• Structure

  
  Tags relating to document structure.

  • HTML document

    
    <HTML> </HTML>

  • Document head

    
    <HEAD> </HEAD>

  • Document body

    
    <BODY> </BODY>

  • Base URL...

    
    <BASE ...>

  • Searchable index

    
    <ISINDEX>

  • HTML skeleton

    
    Inserts a document skeleton. If there is selected text in the edit window this text will be wrapped by the Body tags.

• Headings

  
  Heading tags.

  • H1 - H6

    
    <Hn> </Hn>

  • Title

    
    <TITLE> </TITLE>

• Character

  
  Physical & logical character formatting.

  • Bold text

    
    <B> </B>

  • Italic text

    
    <I> </I>

  • Typewriter text

    
    <TT> </TT>

  • Emphasis

    
    <EM> </EM>

  • Strong emphasis

    
    <STRONG> </STRONG>

  • Code sample

    
    <CODE> </CODE>

  • Keyboard input

    
    <KBD> </KBD>

  • Variable

    
    <VAR> </VAR>

  • Sample

    
    <SAMP> </SAMP>

  • Citation

    
    <CITE> </CITE>

• Paragraph

  
  Tags relating to grouping and separating text elements.

  • Paragraph

    
    <P> </P>

  • Center text

    
    <CENTER> </CENTER>

  • Horizontal rule

    
    <HR>

  • Line break

    
    <BR>

  • Block quote

    
    <BLOCKQUOTE> </BLOCKQUOTE>

  • Address

    
    <ADDRESS> </ADDRESS>

  • Preformatted

    
    <PRE> </PRE>

  • Comment

    
    <!-- -->

• Lists

  
  List tags.

  • List item

    
    <LI>

  • Unordered list

    
    <UL> </UL>

  • Ordered list

    
    <OL> </OL>

  • Menu list

    
    <MENU> </MENU>

  • Directory list

    
    <DIR> </DIR>

  • Glossary list

    
    <DL> </DL>

  • Glossary term

    
    <DT>

  • Term definition

    
    <DD>

• Links

  
  Link tags.

  • Local URL...

    
    <A HREF=" "> </A>

  • Local to anchor...

    
    <A HREF="# "> </A>

  • HTTP URL...

    
    <A HREF="http://"> </A>

  • HTTP to anchor...

    
    <A HREF="http://#"></A>

  • Gopher URL...

    
    <A HREF="gopher://"> </A>

  • FTP URL...

    
    <A HREF="ftp://"> </A>

  • Newsgroup URL...

    
    <A HREF="news:"> </A>

  • Mailto URL...

    
    <A HREF="mailto:"> </A>

  • File URL...

    
    <A HREF="file:///"> </A>

  • Anchor...

    
    <A NAME=" "> </A>

• Inline Image...

  
  <IMG SRC=" " ...>

• Forms

  -- Form tags.

  • Form...

    
    <FORM ...> </FORM>

  • Check box...

    
    <INPUT TYPE="CHECKBOX" NAME=" " ...>

  • Radio button...

    
    <INPUT TYPE="RADIO" NAME=" " ...>

  • Image...

    
    <INPUT TYPE="IMAGE" NAME=" " ...>

  • Submit button...

    
    <INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" ...>

  • Reset button...

    
    <INPUT TYPE="RESET" ...>

  • Entry field...

    
    <INPUT TYPE="TEXT" ...>

  • Password entry...

    
    <INPUT TYPE="PASSWORD" ...>

  • Multiline entry...

    
    <TEXTAREA NAME=" " ...> </TEXTAREA>

  • List box...

    
    <SELECT NAME=" " ...> </SELECT>

  • List box item...

    
    <OPTION VALUE=" ">

  • Hidden field...

    
    <INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" ...>

• More tags...

  Displays the Tag manager dialog from which the user may define and select tags. Tags may be filtered by HTML Version and Category. Different sort orders may be selected from the Sort menu. Tag can be inserted by choosing Tags/Insert tag, by double clicking on the tag or by dragging the tag to the edit window. Context clicking presents the user with a pop-up version of the menu bar. Tags may be added, edited or deleted by choosing the corresponding option from the tags menu.

  

  When adding or editing tags they must be assigned an HTML version and category which are then used for sorting and filtering. When defining tag templates, newlines are represented by \n and tabs by \t. You may insert newlines and tabs into the tag template by pressing Enter or Tab respectively. If you paste text into the tag template edit field, newlines & tabs will be converted to their respective escape sequences when you click OK to finish defining the tag.

  Usually the tags will insert into and wrap around text in the same manner that tags selected from the menus will (i.e., 2 sided tags wrap selected text and 1 sided tags insert before selected text). If, however, you find that a particular tag is not wrapping or inserting the way you would like, you may explicitly define the wrap point with \w. A \w may be inserted into the tag template by pressing Ctrl+W. Explicitly defining the wrap point can also be useful if you have defined a template which consists of a combination of several HTML elements. By defining the wrap point you can control where the cursor will be positioned after the tag elements are inserted.

  Tag templates are limited to 128 characters in length.

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Characters menu

• < Less than

  
  <

• > Greater than

  
  >

• & Ampersand

  
  &

• " Quotation mark

  
  "

• Non-breaking space

  
   

• (C) Copyright

  
  ©

• (R) Registered

  
  ®

• Character accenting

  
  Allows conversion of either the last character typed or a selected character into the character entity representing application of the particular accent. Supported accentings are:
  • Grave
  • Acute
  • Circumflex
  • Tilde
  • Umlaut
  • Ring
  • Slash
  • Cedilla

• Other non-English

  
  Insert character entities for the following characters:
  • Æ, æ, ß, Ð, ð, Þ, þ, ¡, ¿

• More characters...

  
  Displays the Character entity dialog from which the user may select any character supported by HTML 2.0. Different sets of characters and the information shown regarding each character can be selected from the View menu of the dialog. Different sort orders may be selected from the Sort menu. Characters can be inserted by choosing Character/Insert character, by double clicking on the character or by dragging the character to the edit window. Context clicking presents the user with a pop-up version of the menu bar.

  

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Options menu

• Settings...

  
  Displays the WebWriter/2 settings notebook. See the Settings section below for more details.

• Set font...

  
  Allows the user to select the edit window font.

• Set colors...

  
  Allows the user to set the foreground and background colors.

• Word wrap

  
  Word wrap can be toggled off and on.

• Show hints

  
  Toggles the display of a status bar and hint text for menu options.

• Save options

  
  Saves the font, colors, and word wrap options.

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Windows menu

• WebWriter/2 window list

  
  Displays the WebWriter/2 window list.

• New WebWriter/2 window

  
  Opens a new WebWriter/2 window.

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Help menu

• General help

  
  Displays this document.

• Product information

  
  Displays the WebWriter/2 Product information dialog.

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Context menu

• This menu, which will appear when you press mouse button 2 while the cursor is positioned over the edit window, presents a combination of the options from the Tags & Characters menus.

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WebWriter/2 Settings

Paths page

Default document path

This is the default path which will be used in all file dialogs if it is specified and "Use last path in file dialogs" is not selected.

Use last path in file dialogs

Selecting this check box will result in the default file dialog path being the last path that a file was opened from or saved to.

Template page

HTML document template

Allows the user to specify a document to use as a basis for new documents.

Use template for new documents

Selecting this check box will result in the HTML document template specified being inserted into new documents.

Preview page

Preview application

Allows the user to specify up to 2 WWW clients to use for previewing HTML documents. The specified preview applications will appear in the File/Preview menu. The Preview feature has been tested with the IBM WebExplorer & Netscape, but, should work with other WWW clients which can run under OS/2. When using Netscape or other Windows or DOS WWW clients you must be careful to use only path names which are FAT compatible, otherwise, the client will not be able to locate your HTML documents.

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Drag & Drop Support

The following Drag & Drop operations are supported:

• Dropping a data file object onto the WebWriter/2 window will do the following:

  If there is a document open the contents of the data file object will be inserted into the current document at the cursor position. Dropping onto an untitled document will insert the data file contents into the untitled document.

  If no document is open the data file object will be opened.

• Dropping a data file object onto the WebWriter/2 window list will open the the file in a new WebWriter/2 window.

• Dragging from the edit window to a printer object will print the current document. If there is selected text, only the selected text will be printed.

• Dragging from the edit window to the Shredder will delete the current document. If there is selected text, only the selected text will be deleted.

• By dragging from one WebWriter/2 window to another you can copy & paste either an entire document or selected text if any.

• If you drag from the edit window to the desktop or folder, a copy of the document, or selected text if any, will be saved there. This can be useful if you wish to save sections of a document for re-use in other HTML documents.

• You can drag from a WebWriter/2 window to a WebExplorer window to preview your document or selected text if any. This is particularly useful if you wish to quickly preview changes in a document that you have already loaded into WebExplorer via the File/Preview menu options.

• Dragging from the Tag manager dialog and dropping on the WebWriter/2 window will insert the tag at the cursor position. If text is selected in the WebWriter/2 window the tag will be wrapped around the selected text.

• Dragging from the Character entity dialog and dropping on the WebWriter/2 window will insert the character entity at the cursor position.

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Technical Support

Known Problems

1. Some characters do not display properly in the "Character entity" dialog. These characters have been replaced with a text description equivalent in the Character column. The character entity inserted when one of these characters is selected is however correct.
   This problem is due to the fact that codepage 437 which is the default for English language installations of OS/2 does not support display of these characters. I am currently exporing options for a workaround for this problem. This would involve use of codepage 850 and would require that this codepage be specified as either the primary or alternate codepage in the CONFIG.SYS.

2. Changing the WebWriter/2 settings with many WebWriter/2 windows open will sometimes cause the windows to lose track of the configured preview applications. If this happens you can either use the Other... preview option to select the preview application you want or save the document you are working on and open it in a new window.

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Getting Technical Support

For technical support, suggestions or to report bugs in WebWriter/2 I can be reached at:

Or:

Technical support will not be available from 2 weeks preceding Mardis Gras until after Ash Wednesday.

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