High Tea Manual

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Welcome to the High Tea manual

Contents

   * Introduction
   * The ToolBar
   * The Menus
   * Selecting Helper Applications
   * Working with URLs
   * Previewing Pages
   * Hints & Tips

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Introduction

High Tea is (hopefully) a simple to use HTML editor that incorporates many
of the latest HTML (& Netscape) extensions as well as most of the basic HTML
tags that are currently in use. It was written in response to a need from
many friends for "an editor which works without bells and whistles". The
basic aim of High Tea is for you to see on screen, what HTML tags are placed
in the text both so that you can see exactly what is happening and so that
you can actually learn HTML along the way. High Tea also ties in web
browsers, graphic applications and map editors - so you can switch to any of
these whilst working on your HTML document.

In its most basic form, using High Tea is simply a matter of either
selecting the text to format and then choosing an HTML formatting tag from
one of the buttons in the ToolBar or clicking in the document and choosing
one of the buttons which inserts something such as a link or image.

This software is free for non-profit making use.

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The ToolBar


The Toolbar provides access to all the HTML tags and features available in
High Tea:

Headings

     The Headings Button provides a pop-down menu for the Headings Tags
     available in HTML - tags 1 to 6. Highlight the text you want to format
     as a heading and then choose the appropriate heading by clicking on the
     Headings button.

Lists & Tables

     The Lists & Tables button provides a pop-down menu of HTML tags for
     producing various types of lists and for laying out tables.

     Lists:

     Select the text you want formatting as a list and then select a list
     format by clicking on the Lists & Tables button and selecting from the
     menu.

     Tables:

     To layout a table is a slightly more complicated affair. Essentially,
     tables in HTML consist of three separate ellements -

        o Table items (including Table headings)
        o Tables Rows
        o The Table Border

To create a table, follow these simple steps:

  1. Type in the text for all the items you want including in the table
     itself.

  2. Select each item in turn and choose either Table Item or Table Heading
     from the Lists & Tables Button Define how you want the items to be
     formatted from the dialogs that appear (in each case the bolded choice
     is the default)

  3. Select each row in turn and choose Table Row from the Lists & Tables
     Button. Again Choose how the row should be formatted from the dialogs
     that appear (bolded choices are defaults).

  4. Finally, select the whole table and choose Table Border from the Lists
     & Tables Button. Make your choices from the dialogs and then you have a
     table!

Character Style Buttons


The Character style buttons insert HTML tags for Titles, Bold and Italic
formats, Centre alignment, paragraph breaks (new line & blank line) and line
breaks (new line).

Logical Styles

The Logical Styles Button provides a list of HTML logival styles. These are
style tags that are interpreted by the browser you are using rather than
having to send all the formatting information over the network.

The Styles available are:

   * Definition

   * Emphasis

   * Citation

   * Code

   * Keyboard

   * Sample

   * Strong

   * Metasyntactic

   * Preformatted

   * "Block Quote"

Logical Sizes

The Logical Sizes button provides a means to specify character sizes which
are interpreted by the browser. The sizes are as follows:

   * +4
   * +3
   * +2
   * +1
   * -1
   * -2

Edit Image

The Edit Image Button allows you to edit either the most recent image you
have inserted into your document or any other image. The button will
automatically call the graphics package named in High Tea's Preferences as
the Graphics Converter to open the image so that you can edit it using that
package's facilities.

Other Tool Buttons

                                   

The ohter icons in the Toolbar provide means of inserting Hypertext links to
other documents and images; inserting anchor definitions (for links to
specific sections in documents); printing your document and previewing your
document. For further information on inserting links see the Working with
URLs section. Note that the print button prints the text of your file
complete with all the HTML tags. If you want to print just the readable text
of the document choose the print command when viewing the document in your
chosen browser. For more information on previewing your document see the
Previewing Section.

Getting Help

You can get help using High Tea in three ways:

  1. Hold the Command Key down and move the pointer over any button. A brief
     explanation of what the button does will appear at the bottom of the
     window.

  2. Choose Manual HTML from the Help button to read this manual with your
     chosen browser.

  3. Choose Manual Text from the Help button to read a text-only version of
     this manual in a word processor of your choice.

Extras

The Extras button provides extra tags and facilities for the following HTML
extensions:

   * Line - aloows you to insert a horizontal line into your document with a
     specified width and thickness.

   * Blink - When this tag is applied to text in your document, the text
     will blink when viewed in Netscape, although not necessarily in any
     other browser.

   * Wallpaper - another Netscape-only extension (I think!) which allows you
     to specify a graphic to be tiled across the background of your page.
     See the section on Wallpaper in the Hints & Tips topic.

   * Mail - Allows to to insert a link so that those reading your document
     can send Email to an address you specify.

Maps

The Maps button provides a means of both inserting a link to a map image and
editing a map image with the map editor specified in High Tea's Preferences.

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High Tea Menus

   * The File Menu

   * The Edit Menu

   * The Font Menu

   * The Style Menu

   * The URLs Menu

   * The Images Menu

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The File Menu

The File Menu basically does what any other Macintosh application's file
menu does - provides the commands for openning, closing, saving, printing
and page setup. An addition to High Tea's File Menu is the Preview item
which allows you to preview your document with the browser specified in High
Tea's Preferences.

The Edit Menu

The Edit Menu again provides most of the basic facilities of any Macintosh
Edit menu with Undo, copying, cutting and pasting all supported. In
addition, there are also facilities for finding text in your document, and
performing search/replace tasks. Finally, the Preferences item in the Edit
Menu allows you to set the default font for display on the screen, and also
the web browser, graphics converter and map editor that High Tea will call
when viewing your document or editing images and maps. For more information
on choosing browsers etc see the Setting Helper Applications section.

The Font Menu

The Font Menu allows you to set the font for the text as it is displayed in
High Tea's windows - this is purely for cosmetic purposes as it does not
effect the font displayed when viewing the document in a browser.

The Style Menu

As with the Font Menu, the Style Menu only affects the way text is displayed
in High Tea's window and not the way it looks when viewed in a browser. All
the usual styles and font sizes are there for you to choose from.

The URLs Menu

The URLs Menu essentially allows you to store commonly used URLs (Uniform
Resource Locators) so that you don't have to keep on typing all the lengthy
HTML syntax for the URLs. URLs can be stored in the URLs Menu itself by
choosing either Add Most Recent (which adds the last URL link you inserted
into your document) or Add Another URL (which adds a URL you specify). From
then on, these URLs appear in the URLs Menu and you can simply choose them
from the menu to insert them into your document. You can also manipulate URL
lists by either editing the current list directly by choosing Edit URL List;
save the URL list to a text file by choosing Store URL List; and retrieve an
already saved list by choosing Load URL List.

The Images Menu

The Images Menu does exactly the same as the URLs menu but with image file
names rather than URLs - so you can add the last image inserted or another
image to the Images Menu so that, from then on, you can simply choose the
image name from the menu to insert it into your document. You can also edit,
save and retrieve lists of images in the same way as URL lists.

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Setting Helper Applications

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You can specify three types of Helper Application in High Tea:

   * A Web Browser to preview your documents with.

   * A Graphics Application to edit and convert Graphics files with.

   * A Map editor for creating and editing Web Maps

All of these helper applications can be set from the Preferences dialog box
with is available from the Edit Menu. Click on the Browser button to specify
a web browser, on the Converter button to specify a graphics
converter/editor and on the Map Editor button to specify a map editor.

As far as my own choices are concerned, I find Netscape by far the best
browser (you get to see all the extensions that other browsers don't
necessarily interpret).

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Working with URLs

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There are three ways of working with Hypertext links in HTML documents:

   * Specify a full URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for the link

   * Specify a relative location for the link

   * Specify a Target location to jump to a particular location within a
     document

In High Tea, whichever way you choose to define a link, first select the
text that will be displayed as the link and then click on the Link Button
 

Specifying the Full URL

When specifying a full URL, include all the information you would enter when
openning a URL in a web browser - i.e. the protocol (HTTP, Gopher, FTP etc),
the site name (e.g. www.mistral.co.uk/cbuzz) and the document name where
necessary (e.g. "High Tea Manual.html"). Note that when including document
which has spaces in its name, you should always include the document name in
quotes e.g.

http://www.mistral.co.uk/cbuzz/"High Tea Manual.html"



Specifying Relative Locations

If the document you want to link to is on the same server as the document
which includes the link, then you can use relative links instead of
including the full URL. I find that it is generally simplest to include all
relatively linked documents in the same directory as the documents that
contain the links. In this case you can simply specify the name of the
document as the link and it should work (again, surround document names with
quotes where the name contains spaces).

Specifying Targets

Targets are points in a document that are marked so that , if the point or
Target, is included in a URL, then not only does the link jump to the
appropriate document, but also to the point in the document defined as the
Target. You can define text in a document as a Target by selecting the text
and then clicking on the Target button . You will then be promtped
for a name to give the Target. You can include links to Targets either in
the same document or in another document. To specify a link to a target
within the same document, select the text to be the link and click on the
Link button  . When prompted to enter the URL, simply put the Target
name preceded with a # sign (without any spaces). To create a link to a
Target in another document, select the text to become the link, and click on
the Link button. Enter the URL or relative location of the document followed
(without any intervening spaces) by a # sign and the Target name.

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Previewing Pages

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You can preview your pages at any time by either selecting Preview from the
File menu or clicking on the Preview button   in the Toolbar. In
either case, you must first have specified a web browser to use in High
Tea's Preferences. As some of the extensions supported here only appear to
work in Netscape, you should be aware that document previews are
browser-dependent and your document may look different in a different
browser.

As whatever browser you choose gets loaded into memory alongside High Tea
when previewing a document, your Mac will need enough available memory to
run both High Tea and the browser (High Tea uses 1500 k by default). If the
browser fails to open when previewing this is almost always due to a lack of
memory rather than High Tea not workng (honest!).


Hints & Tips

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Select Before Tagging

     Always select the text you want to format before choosing the
     appropriate HTML formatting tag - otherwise you'll keep getting the
     irritating message that High Tea displays when you forget!

Document Sections

     High Tea automatically puts the default document sections into each new
     document. These are essentailly tags for the HTML document, its Header
     and its body. Under almost all occasions, these sections are ignored or
     not necessary and I was going to leave them out completely until
     Netscape introduced wallpaper which seems to require being the first
     item after the body tag!

Netscapes Extensions

     Whilst I was writing High Tea, more HTML extensions were announced from
     Netscape - I'm never quite sure whether these are just Netscape-only
     extensions (i.e. only the Netscape browser will interpret them) or
     whether they will eventually be included in other browsers - so just be
     warned that somethings may be dependent upon the browser you and,
     ultimately, your viewing public use.

Wallpaper

     A friend of mine went into raptures about wallpaper when it first came
     out as if it would completely revolutionise the way web pages look.
     Well, he was absolutely right - but on the whole I have to say that, in
     my opinion, wallpaper should be treated with caution. For a start it,
     it takes longer to load a document that uses wallpaper and, if that
     isn't bad enough, when it loads you have difficulty reading the text.
     The golden rule here of course is, if you're going to use wallpaper,
     then make sure the image you choose is suitable and allows the
     overlying text to be legible.

Tables

     I approach table creation from a "smallest upwards" perspective. In
     other words, I define the table items and headings first, then the
     table rows, then finally the table itself with all its borders cell
     padding etc. This seems simpler and easier on the eye than wading
     through in a largest-first manner.

Known Bugs & Problems

I know of two that I can't really fix:

   * Vertical lines appearing - for some strange reason, two or three
     vertical lines occasionally appear on the screen. These cause no
     obvious problems with the way High Tea works and disappear the next
     time High Tea redraws the screen. As to what's causing it - if anyone's
     got any suggestions I'd be pleased to hear them!

   * Speed - High Tea works fine on anyu 68040-based Mac or above - I've
     tried it on an LC 475, a Performa 630 and PowerMac 8100 and it goes
     like a rocket. However, on less powerfull machines such as my own aged
     IIci, it struggles a bit - particularly when scrolling the text - soz,
     but there's nothing I can do about this.

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Acknowledgements

I'd like to thank all the guys at CBuzz (Brighton on-line magazine) for
advice, HTML expertise and testing. In particular, Tim and Ant for tea and
food and enthusiasm, but most of all Jerry who had the patience to hammer
High Tea into the ground and run up a huge phone bill by constantly phoning
me with bug reports - Thanks Jerry - without testing software development
would just be a very complicated shot in the dark!

Thanks must also go to John Pugh for his excellent HPopupMenu XFCN which is
one of the most useful XFCNs around.

                            ...HAPPY HTMLING!...