The `jhtml' Mode
Introduction
The
jhtml mode of
jedit is a WYSIWYG mode that allows creation of simple HTML documents,
as used on the
World Wide Web.
At present, it suffers from a number of limitations in the kind
of HTML it can generate. Among the most important:
- It only supports physical font tags (i.e., tags which specify
type style, rather than tags which specify the function of text
in the document). So you can specify that a phrase is in italics
or monospaced, but you can't specify that the phrase represents
a variable or a piece of computer code. Physical tags are deprecated
on the Web.
- It only supports one kind of list (unordered), and only one
level of list nesting. It's also a little tricky to enter lists.
- It sometimes inserts superfluous
<p> or
<br> tags.
- It doesn't support documentinternal links (i.e., links to
another place in the same document). It lets you enter them,
but doesn't save them in the HTML it generates.
I hope to fix some of these limitations in future versions.
Another significant limitation is that
jhtml mode doesn't edit HTML documents directly. Instead, it edits
a
.jhtml (or
.jht) document, which is in a
jstoolsspecific format similar to that used by
jdoc and
jdoc mode. Whenever the document is saved, however, it
also writes out a corresponding
.html (or
.htm) document in the same directory. So the HTML is always generated
from
jedit's internal representation of the text. It follows that (without
a lot of handediting) you can't take an existing HTML document
that you didn't create with
jhtml mode and edit it with
jhtml mode. It also follows that if you edit the HTML generated
by
jhtml mode directly, you will lose your changes the next time you
edit and save the original
jhtml document.
This document describes the
jhtml mode available with version 4.1/4.2 of
jedit.
The Format Menu
As in
richtext mode,
the `Format' menu is available by default. (Of course, you can change which
menus are available with the
ModeSpecific Preferences panel, as with any mode.)
The jhtml Menu
The `jhtml' menu has commands for applying fonts and hypertext
tags to your text. The first group of commands applies various
fonts to the text. (These commands work identically to the
corresponding `Level
n Heading' commands, but they may be easier to access, especially
if you use the
keyboard shortcuts, and their names give a clearer sense of how they should be used
in HTML files.)
Make Section Title
This command creates a level 1 heading.
Make Subsection Heading
Make Subsubsection Heading
These commands create level 2 and 3 headings, useful for finer
structure in your document.
Make Overall Topic Title
This command makes a level 0 heading. There should be exactly
one of these, at the very top of your document. (Nothing enforces
this currently, but future versions of
jhtml mode may use this as the title, or to generate indices.)
The next command doesn't affect the text at all:
Show Tags at Insert...
This command shows the text widget tags in effect at the insert
point. Because these can be related to the names of anchors
in your document or hypertext links, you can use this for troubleshooting
or to remind yourself what the name of an anchor is.
The next few commands are used for turning the selected text into
a hypertext link or anchor:
Anchor Name...
This command prompts you for a name to give to the selected region
of text. The name can then be used as an
anchor, the target of a hypertext link. A default name will be provided
based on the content of the selected text, but you can replace
it with whatever you like.
Within the editor, text that's been marked as an anchor is displayed
on a stippled background, to give you some visual indication where
the anchors are in your document. Anchors are not distinguished
visually in
jdoc itself.
Local Cross Reference...
This command prompts you for the name of an anchor in the current
document. (You need to precede the name of the anchor with
a hash mark, `#'.) The editor tries to guess a likely anchor name based on
the selected text, but you may need to edit it. The selected
text is then turned into a hypertext link to that anchor.
Local cross references are currently not reflected in the generated
HTML. This may change in the future, however, and they
are preserved in the
.jhtml file.
Cross Reference...
This command prompts you for the name of a document to link to,
in the same format you would use as an argument to
jdoc on the command line. The editor tries to guess a likely
document name based on the selected text, but as with `Local Cross
Reference...' you may need to edit it. In the panel that prompts
you for the document name, you can press the
Tab key to do filename completion; this is useful if you are
editing several documents in the same directory that have links
to each other.
You can link to a particular anchor in another document by following
the document name with a hash mark (#) and the name of the anchor within that document, as in `jstools.jdoc#Preferences'. (You can leave the trailing `.jdoc' off a document name and the link will still work, but I suggest
you use full names.)
You can also use World Wide Web URL's starting with `http:' or `ftp:';
jdoc will try to use
Mosaic to view these.
Incidentally, the `Local Cross Reference...' and `Cross Reference...'
commands actually have identical effect; they only differ in
the default links they suggest.
Man Page Reference...
This command makes a link to a UNIX manual page. It prompts
you for the name of a manual page, making a guess based on the
selected text. As a convenience, it also changes the selected
text to typewriter font. (In some cases you may want to change
this to some other font afterwards.)
Note that the actual text of the manual page is not included in
the document, so the manual page will be looked up on the
reader's system. You should be aware that the reader may not have
the same manual pages (or any at all) available as you do, and
that even if the same manual pages are available, they may describe
different versions of software than they do on your system.
Currently, this kind of link is not reflected in the generated
HTML at all. In the future I may provide a preference setting
that would allow you to specify how to map man page entries to
URLs, for people who have converted manual pages available.
The next few commands let you add structure to your document:
Horizontal Rule
This command inserts a horizontal line or separator in the document,
corresponding to an HTML
<hr> tag.
Creating and Editing Lists
The last three commands allow you to create unordered lists -
lists of bulletted items.
To start a list, choose `Unordered List' (before typing the contents
of the list). The first thing in any list must be a list item
marker, so choose `New List Item'. (This is reflected as a
bullet.) Type the contents of your list, using `New List Item'
whenever you want to start a new item. When you're done, choose
`End Unordered List' to go back to typing normal text.
To turn text you've already typed into a list, select the whole
text and choose `Unordered List'. Then click at the beginning
of the list and insert the first list item marker with `New List
Item'. Continue inserting list item markers wherever desired
in the list. (Your list will look better as you edit it if
each list item marker is on the beginning of a line, although
this won't make any difference in the HTML generated.)
You'll notice (if you're using Tk 4.0 or later) that the text
of a list is indented with respect to the surrounding text (and
that the bullets that mark each list item are indented less than
the rest of the list). You'll also notice that the background
of the list text is a stippled yellow. This is to allow people
using Tk 3.6 and earlier to distinguish list text from normal
text, and also to make it easier to tell if text you intend to
be within the list isn't marked as belonging to the list.
All text within a list must be marked as part of the list (i.e.,
it must have the stippled yellow background). If any text within
the list is
not marked as part of the list, the HTML list generated will look
very strange. After you edit text in a list, if you're not
certain the entire list is still marked properly, you may find
it useful to select the entire list and choose `Unordered List',
just to make sure. (Then click somewhere else and choose `End
Unordered List' before you continue typing normal text.)
The Sections Menu
The `Sections' menu lets you quickly jump to a particular section
in your document, or to the top or bottom of the document.
It uses level 1 headings to find the beginnings of sections.
Following Links
Ordinarily, clicking on a link within
jhtml mode doesn't follow the link. (It would be hard to select
text in a link if clicking
did follow the link.) However, you may want to try following
a link in your document while you compose it, for instance to
see if you spelled a URL correctly. You can do that by holding
down the
Control key while you click on the link.
Saving and Loading Files
The file format
jhtml files are saved in is internally identical to that that
richtextmode files are saved in, although
richtext files don't have hypertext information in them. (The names
of
jhtml files should end in `.jhtml' or `.jht', and the names of
richtext files should end in `.jrt'.) The first part of the file contains the actual text, and
should be reasonably legible if you look directly at the file
contents (with another editor, for example). This is followed
by information about stretches of text with various styles - e.g.,
where all the sequences of boldface text start and end, and by
information about special positions in the file, such as where
the insert point is or where the last search started from.
(This last information isn't normally used.)
(This format is implemented by the
j:tag:archive_text_widget and
j:tag:restore_text_widget procedures in the
jtexttags.tcl library, which see for more information.)
In addition to the
jhtml file itself, whenever you save a
jhtml file a corresponding HTML file is also saved, in the same directory.
If the
jhtml file name ends in `.jhtml', the HTML filename will replace that with `.html'. If it ends in `.jht', the HTML filename will replace that with `.htm', for the benefit of people who need to move their HTML files
to PC filesystems. Otherwise, the HTML filename will be constructed
by tacking `.htm' onto the end of the original filename.
You'll never need to refer to the HTML file directly from withing
jedit; it's always saved for you whenever you save the
jhtml file. (In fact, you'll probably find it confusing if you
try to edit the HTML file directly, because it will be overwritten
the next time you save the
jhtml file.)
Converting File Formats
You can use the editor's `Rich Save As...' command on
the `Format' menu to convert your document to other formats. It's not generally
useful to convert
jhtml documents to HTML explicitly, since this is done for you automatically.
When converting to other formats, some information is lost.
(In particular, list formatting, horizontal rules, and hypertext
links are lost.)
See Also
The `jdoc' Mode
The `richtext' Mode