Entering Text

Text is entered in the normal way, using the paragraph styles provided in the template. These are available in the drop-down list box on the left of the HTML Author Toolbar. (The standard Word for Windows list box for selecting paragraph styles.) The paragraph styles are shown in bold type in the list box. It is essential that you use the paragraph styles provided, because HTML Author expects to see these when generating the HTML file. A good range of HTML styles is provided, and more will be added as the product develops.

You may also centre a paragraph using the standard Word For Windows Alignmnent buttons , which have been made available in the HTML Author Toolbar. The paragraph alignment will be converted to the appropriate HTML attributes when the HTML is generated.

Line breaks may be inserted within a paragraph using the standard Word for Windows line break (obtained by pressing Shift&Return). This will be converted to an HTML line break tag (<B>) when the HTML file is generated.

Some paragraph styles may also be selected using the Paragraph Formats toolbar. This provides normal, list and heading paragraph styles. The backward and forward pointing arrow buttons may be used to promote or demote a heading or list paragraph.

Lists

These are produced using the list styles: List, List 2, ... and Numbered List 1, Numbered List 2, ... The numbers relate to the level of nesting of the lists. E.g. if you want to put a list inside an item in another list, use List for the outer list, and List 2 for the contained list. You can mix list styles in a nested list structure.

For Descriptive Lists, these are always assumed to be at level 1. The Descriptive List Title style is used for the title of an item, and Descriptive List Text is used for the description. You may put as many description paragraphs as you like after an item title.

You may embed a list or a numbered list within a descriptive list text by using a list level of 2 or higher. A level 1 list will cause the descriptive list to be terminated.

List items may be promoted or demoted using the arrow buttons in the Paragraph Formats toolbar.

Character Formatting

Character formatting codes may be inserted by highlighting the text to be formatted, then selecting the appropriate character formatting styles from the styles list in the HTML Author Toolbar. The styles can also be obtained from the Character Formatting toolbar if it is visible. (To select toolbars in Word for Windows, click the right mouse button over any toolbar and select the required toolbar from the list that appears.)

The character formatting styles are shown in standard (not bold) type. The character styles currently available are: Citation (<cite>), Code (<code>), Emphasis (<em>), Fixed Width (<tt>), Strong (<strong>), Variable (<var>), Blink (<blink>), Bold (<b>), Italic (<i>), and Bold Italic (<b><i>). Default formats have been defined in HTML Author for these styles, based roughly on the formats rendered by Netscape, but you may change them using the standard Word For Windows Format Styles dialogue box if you wish. The Blink style appears as double underlined text by default.

You should not use the Microsoft Word formats for italic and bold text, because the HTML generator will ignore them. Styles have been provided in the list for these formats as well as the logical ones. Note, however, that the use of HTML physical formats should be discouraged. The Bold and Italic formats can be obtained in Netscape by using the Strong and Emphasis styles. It has not been possible to combine more than one physical format on one piece of text at this release of HTML Author.

You may find out the style of a piece of character formatted text by placing the edit cursor inside the text. The character style will then be displayed in the styles list box in the HTML Author Toolbar.

Note. When character formatting is applied to an existing anchor field, the format of the field text is modified along with all other text in the selection. This also causes hidden text in the field to become visible. When this happens, the field may be returned to its correct format by double-clicking on it to get the Anchors Dialogue box, then pressing the Insert button. This will re-insert field using the correct formats. In some cases, the hidden text will cause the field to be too long to fit on a single line. To obtain the Anchors Dialogue box in this situation, select the field by clicking on the error message displayed in the text, then press Alt+Shift+F9. (See the note on this in the section on anchors.)

Inserting Comments

Comments may be inserted into your document using the Comments style. By default, these are rendered as hidden text in the Word source document. You may reveal the hidden text by clicking the Show/Hide button in the HTML Author toolbar (this is a Microsoft Word for Windows button). They will then appear in a small red character font. If you are looking at the Word source version of this manual, you can press the show/hide button now, and see the comment at the beginning of this section. Comments are converted into HTML comment tags when the HTML is generated.