HTML Practice Thread

Subject: HTML Practice Thread
From: Tiger
Date: 03 Aug 99 - 03:32 PM

After screwing up yet another attempt to add some simple formatting to a lyric, I came up with the idea of a practice thread where we can try out stuff before we submit it.

Unfortunately, the Mudcat edit process does funny things with paragraph marks, carriage returns, and the like, and the picture is further complicated by options you may have set in your word processor.

So, why not practice here? Before you mess up a pretty lyric, make sure it gets through the Mudcat filters unscathed. Save Joe some work!!! The thread can be periodically dumped and restarted.

I'm gonna try my last screw-up again as an example.

Also...Joe, Max, et al - if you'd rather we cut down on HTML, please speak up. Myself, I don't try much more than bolding, indents and line breaks, but I still get in trouble.

.....Tiger

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Tiger
Date: 03 Aug 99 - 03:36 PM

Maybe this will be better.

Hi, Beau.......

Well, here's how I do it. The key is E, playing D formation with capo on the second fret. You can fancy it up nicely by adding Dsus4 and/or A7sus4 (easily done without moving from D position).

......Tiger

No Man's Land - Eric Bogle

Well, [D]how do you do, young [G]Willie Mc-[Em]Bride,
Do you [A7]mind if I sit here, down [G]by your grave-[D]side,
And rest for a while in the [G]warm summer [Em]sun?
I've been [A7]working all day, and [G]I'm nearly [D]done.

I [D]see by your gravestone you were [G]only nine-[Em]teen
When you [A7]joined great fallen in [G]19-[A7]16.
I [D]hope you died well, and I [G]hope you died [Em]clean,
Or, for [A7]Willie McBride, was it [G]slow and ob-[D]scene?

CHORUS (Each stanza)
Did they [A7]beat the drum slowly, did they [G]play the fife [D]lowly,
Did they [A7]sound the dead march as they [G]lowered you [A7]down?
Did the [G]band play the [A7]Last Post and [D]chorus,
Did the [G]pipes play "The [Em]Flowers of the [A7]For-[D]est"?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Tiger
Date: 03 Aug 99 - 03:37 PM

Well, all right, then!!!!!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 02:21 AM

Jolly good show, lad! Now tell me how to make indents in HTML (Joe, I know you're lurking out there!). I'd like to be able to indent the beginning lines of the paragraphs in any of my posts that grow overlong. Indents would avoid the blank spaces between paragraphs that many of us use now. Perhaps this isn't going to be really necessary, as a excellent solution would be simply to stick to shorter posts! Right?

Sandy

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 04:32 AM

Well, Sandy, then you have to graduate into the wicked ampersand codes. They all begin with an ampersand and end with a semicolon. the one you want for indents is multiple non-breaking spaces, abbreviated NBSP. One non-breaking space looks like this:

 

Got that? ampersand-nbsp-semicolon. Don't ask me how I get that to display - the code for that would drive you bonkers. A non-operating ampersand it & - and it gets more complicated after that.
Not the trick that keeps you from going crazy is that you highlight and copy [ctrl-c] the first code and paste [ctrl-v] it into place for the other spaces.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: AndyG
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 04:50 AM

Actually Joe, the tags you want are the
<dl>
<dt>
<dd>
</dt>
</dl>
list formatting tags

which will give

multiple indents

thus

AndyG

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 05:27 AM

I knew there had to be an easier way, but the nonbreaking space method was what somebody told me about a while back. Andy, I don't quite see how to use those tags. Please explain. I looked at the source of this page to see how you typed it, but it still didn't make sense to me.
Thanks.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 05:30 AM

It

didn't

work.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 05:32 AM

OK

one

more

try

Did it work?
-Joe Offer-

Subject: ADD: The Prickle Holly Bush^^
From: AndyG
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 05:37 AM

Joe,

The following should, I hope, help. Use view source and I hope you'll see how "editable" the text is and also be able to follow how the nested list structure works. (I've modified this text from one of my web pages for this example.)

AndyG

The Prickle Holly Bush

Come slack your horse cries George,
Come slack it for a while,
For I think I see my father,
Coming over yonder stile.

Have you brought gold,have you brought silver,

To set me free,

For to keep my body from the cold gaol walls,

And my neck from the high gallows tree.

I've no gold,I've no silver,

To set you free,

For I have come for to see you hang,

All hang upon the high gallows tree.

Oh the Prickle Holly Bush,it pricks,it pricks,

It pricks my heart full sore,

And if ever I get out of the prickle holly bush,

I'll never get in there any more.

Come slack your horse cries George,
Come slack it for a while,
For I think I see my mother,
Coming over yonder stile.

Etc.

Come slack your horse cries George,
Come slack it for a while,
For I think I see my sister,
Coming over yonder stile.

Etc.

Come slack your horse cries George,
Come slack it for a while,
For I think I see my sweet-heart,
Coming over yonder stile.

Have you brought gold,have you brought silver,

To set me free,

For to keep my body from the cold gaol walls,

And my neck from the high gallows tree.

I've brought gold,I've brought silver,

To set you free,

For I don't think to see you hang,

All hang upon the high gallows tree.

Oh the prickle holly bush it pricks it pricks,

It pricks my heart full sore,

And if ever I get out of the prickle holly bush,

I'll never get in there any more.

^^

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: AndyG
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 05:46 AM

Sorry Joe,
In my rush to help I forgot about the way the forum software handles text, (sigh).
If you point your browser to The Prickle Holly Bush you'll see what I mean about "editability" and be able to see the structure.

AndyG

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 05:55 AM

G'day,
I suppose I'm being a killjoy if I say that you can do the whole thing offline, in the privacy of your own home, saving you the embarrassment of the whole world seeing your mistakes:

a) Type it into notepad,
b) Save it with a .htm extension,
c) Double click on the saved file - your browser should open with your text laid out as you want (well if you got it right anyway)
d) When it's right copy it from notepad & paste it to Mudcat.

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 10:39 PM

Gawdamighty! I really opened a can of worms, didn't I?
<&mbsp;><&mbsp;><&mbsp;><&mbsp;><&mbsp;>Like this, Joe?
<&mbsp;><&mbsp;><&mbsp;>Sandy

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 10:45 PM

Nope. Not like that, obviously! Better lead me through it again; I'm a slow learner.

Grandpa Paton

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 10:45 PM

Try again, Sandy. Non-Breaking SPace begins with a different letter, and the ampersand codes aren't enclosed in angle brackets.
      If I did it right, this line is indented five spaces, and it should be underlined and in blue.
I'm still working on understanding Andy's tags, but the nonbreaking spaces should work in the meantime.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 11:02 PM

Alan's suggestion that we try this in the privacy of our own homes makes a lot of sense. I've never been fond of public humiliation.
     Is that five spaces?
   Cyberklutz himself.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 11:06 PM

I kinda like public humiliation myself, as long as I'm not the one being humiliated. Sandy, this is labeled as a practice thread, so eventually I'll copy the good stuff over to the main HTML thread, and I'll delete your mistakes so you can maintain the delusion of perfection.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 04 Aug 99 - 11:07 PM

YAHOO! The bloody thing can COUNT 'em! Thanks, Joe. I'll work on the others when I can understand them a little.
     Sandy

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Tony Burns
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 08:01 AM

Joe, What Andy has done is to use the definition list tags for a purpose other than intended. The DT tage is for Definition Term and DD is Definition Data. Think of it as a dictionary usage. By not supplying data to the DT tag you seem to get an indent. Below is an example with data provided for these two tags and (hopefully) readable tags used to produce it.

Term 1

The definition 1

Term 2

The definition 2

<dl>
<dt>Term 1
<dd>The definition 1
</dt>
<dt>Term 2
<dd>The definition 2
</dt>
</dl>

btw - If you don't need nested indents you can use the <blockquote> </blockquote> pair of tags.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: AndyG
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 08:53 AM

Whilst I'll freely admit to an interpretive use of HTML's definition list structure, I have to say it's the best I've found. The <blockquote> </blockquote> tags for instance put a blank line before and after the quoted text and I know of no way to supress this feature. Heavy use of embedded whitespace (&nbsp;) can make it very difficult to maintain the text content of the page in question.

AndyG

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Tony Burns
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 09:09 AM

I hope you didn't take my explanation as a critisism Andy. I was just trying to help Joe understand the definition list tags. I've used them as you described many times. What we really need here is a good <indent> tag.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: AndyG
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 09:56 AM

Tony,

Nope, no offence taken.
I was just trying to say that as there is no inbuilt indenting function in HTML, I Regard the definition list tags as the best available choice.
I admit though that they take a bit of effort to use as the indenting is not the primary intention of the tag.

Joe,
Here's a (hopefully) better example of the list tag in use. At least it's documented. :)
Use view source to see what I'v done.

AndyG

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Tony Burns
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 10:14 AM

For those who are really interested you can read all about HTML 4.0 at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/.

I downloaded the .pdf version to read when I have trouble sleeping.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: marion
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 10:30 AM

Fairy Reels A-Plenty

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Celtic-End Singer
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 10:13 PM


This is line one
This should be line two
This should be bold
This should blink

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Celtic-End Singer
Date: 06 Aug 99 - 01:04 AM

A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT

(Robert Burns)
Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, and a' that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that!


What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, and a' that;
Gie fools their silks and knaves their wine,
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, and a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that!



Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, and a' that,
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
His ribband, star and a' that;
The man of independent mind
He looks and laughs at a' that.


A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might-
Gude faith, he mauna fa' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their dignities, and a' that;
The pith o' sense and pride o' worth
Are higher rank than a' that!


Then let us pray that come it may-
As come it will for a' that-
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That Man to Man the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that


hings = hangs
a' that = all that
hoddin grey = course home-made woollen cloth
birkie = fellow
coof = fool, ninny
aboon =above
mauna = must not
greesupremacy


Like all true nationalists, Burns was also an internationalist.

The first four lines of the first verse, the sense of which is often misunderstood, may be thus interpreted: "Is there anyone who hangs his head in shame at his poverty? If there is such a poor creature, we pass him by as a coward slave."

With reference to the seventh line of the first verse, a similar though occurs in Wycherley's "Plain-Dealer", which Burns may have seen: "I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better or heavier. Your lord is a leaden shilling, which you bend every way, and which debases the stamp he bears."

As far as the fourth line of the fourth verse is concerned, "'Fa", as a noun, means lot or share; as a verb, to get or obtain. Burns here uses the word in a violent sense- "He must not attempt or pretend to have that as a thing in his power."

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Aug 99 - 02:41 AM

Hi, Celtic. I hope you don't plan to use that

<h1>

headline size too often in the Forum, let you be thought of as "indiscreet." (grin)
Usually, I think that <big> is plenty, although you might want to use

<h2>

or maybe even

<h3>

For some reason, <blink> only works with Netscape, and
<marquee>
with Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE).
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 06 Aug 99 - 07:07 AM

Heading

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Aug 99 - 04:21 AM

Hi, Dan - when you've got more than one word in a post, make sure you close off that headline with </h2> - most HTML tags have to be closed when you're done with them [with a slash and a repeat of the command].
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Barbara
Date: 07 Aug 99 - 03:08 PM

*BLUSH*

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Barbara
Date: 07 Aug 99 - 03:15 PM

HELLO and GREETINGS and WARM and FUZZY and DELECTABLEand SWEET KISSES and HUGS fromBARBARA

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Aug 99 - 03:32 PM

Gee, Barbara, you certainly used some unusual colors:

     Green
and Cyan
and Magenta
and Chartreuse (you spelled it wrong, I think)
and Orange
and Purple
and Pink
and Tan
and Mauve

-Joe Offer, playing with the

<ul> tag-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Aug 99 - 06:32 PM

uhhh...for those who are dead serious about learning HTML....here is a page of ALL of it...lists, compatibility guides...links to examples...etc.

HTML Tag list and spec guide

!!be warned...this is a LONG page to load the first time...there may be easier ways...(if you have the space, you could download the entire page as is and always have it close ay hand...I have an HTML reading program called NavRoad which will open any HTML item on your hard drive and allow you to use it as an adjunct to your browser, etc...it also views pictures)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Aug 99 - 07:18 PM

here is the place to look at NavRoad and several sister programs this company has...their virtue is that they are configured for either browser, and they claim they will run on anything from a 286 up.....

Lots of neat HTML aids

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Aug 99 - 09:07 PM

Hey, this is fun, bill!

<font color=#> ... </font>
#= #rrggbb Hex Number, or Name:
      Black, Olive, Teal, Red, Blue, Maroon, Navy, Gray, Lime,
      Fuchsia, White, Green, Purple, Silver, Yellow, Aqua

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Aug 99 - 09:11 PM

---

Hi

---

there

---

everybody

---

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Max
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 01:41 PM

I was fooling around (as if I have nothing else to do) with the goal of trying to figure out a way to allow folks to use more style and such when posting a message without them needing to know HTML. Truth is, I've been thinking about this for 2 years or more, but have always held off because of browser compatability. Anyhow, I came up with this: Experimental HTML Thingy. It uses javascript. I suppose I'll just let a few of you play with it before I go to all the trouble of explaining it. Try it out.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Mike Regenstreif
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 05:34 PM

Just testing...

Folk Roots/Folk Branches Blue Clicky Thing

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Mike Regenstreif
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 05:36 PM

another test

Folk Roots/Folk Branches

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Lesley N.
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 06:50 PM

I must say I haven't been on the thread before because I practice - that is screw up enough - coding my own pages - don't need the extra practice (except at typing at which I do 90 words a minute with 30 mistakes...)

However, I wandered by....

MAX now that is impressive - what a grand experimental thing! Are you going to make that generally available?

Used it to put this really good link for learning HTML in: HTML 4 Rookies

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 11:07 PM

neat,Max!!Make it a link on each thread page!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 11:20 PM

tricks with Max's new toy

I love Mudacat
Yes, I do
My whole family
Loves it too.

Blue Clicky Thing for Possum Meat...and others

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: j0_77
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 11:46 PM

Now this is *cool*
Great stuff Max - mooooorrrreeee :)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: WyoWoman
Date: 14 Aug 99 - 01:23 AM

Hey, Lesley, That was an excellent site. I've bookmarked it for future reference.

I still don't understand how to get those cool colors???

WyoWoman

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: WyoWoman
Date: 14 Aug 99 - 01:26 AM

Wowee Zowee!!!

It worked!!!

I'm so

jazzed!

Colors?????

WW

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: davidmc24
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 09:41 PM

For indentation, I would suggest using CSS attributes (CSS is an acronym, Cascading Style Sheets). CSS is a technology specifically designed to allow detailed formatting of web pages.

HTML is supposed to be primarily concerned with what the information IS, not what it looks like. In this way, a browser can display the content reasonably regardless of its output mechanism, be it a color display, a grayscale laptop LCD, a Braille writer, or a text-to-speech sythesis. When you use a tag for something other than its intended purpose (e.g., a definition list for indentation), you may well get unpredictable results in less common browsers.

If you use CSS for your formatting, you don't have to worry about this. (Though admittedly, CSS is only supported in IE3+ and Netscape 4+) For example, in CSS, you might use this HTML to achieve indentation of lyrics:
<div style="text-indent: .25in">This is text, indented a quarter inch</div>

This is text, indented a quarter inch

You don't have to use the style="" with only the DIV tag... you can use it with any tag that has a start and an end (paragraphs, bold, italic, etc.) I usually use DIV because it doesn't have any meaning in and of itself, and thus allows that tag to be only to apply my style information.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 09:45 PM

hey...great, David...thanks...I need info like that!..so much to keep up with if you are not using it every day..

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: HaHa
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 10:16 PM

Those color words were interesting. The picture was a surprise! Let's see...

Blue Clicky Thing for more colors... and a puzzle!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: HaHa
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 10:22 PM

Oops. So much for stealing other people's work!

Blue Clicky Thing for more colors... and a puzzle!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Jeri
Date: 15 Aug 99 - 11:12 PM

Click on the Celtic art thingie for more Celtic art.


Max, are image files allowed now?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: unclenort
Date: 07 Sep 99 - 04:07 PM

hey if this is a practice post
i'm gonna practice nope still
dont get it

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: unclenort
Date: 07 Sep 99 - 04:12 PM

i'm troubled im troubled
i'm troubled in html
if trouble don't kill me
i'll go stait to hell

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Matthew B.
Date: 24 Sep 99 - 05:57 PM

Did I set the color right?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Mían
Date: 24 Sep 99 - 07:52 PM

testing a blue clicky thing. it may not turn out to be blue in this one but if the link works i shall be happy.

click here

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Matthew B.
Date: 25 Sep 99 - 11:48 AM

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Matthew B.
Date: 25 Sep 99 - 11:49 AM

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Matthew B.
Date: 25 Sep 99 - 11:53 AM

For More Info

Matthew, click here for guidance...
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 03 Oct 99 - 12:21 AM

which sorta works, although the same code produces a different result in FrontPage Express.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: wildlone
Date: 03 Oct 99 - 02:07 PM

Just a trial run click

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: wildlone
Date: 03 Oct 99 - 02:10 PM

got blue clicky but web site not found will check

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: wildlone
Date: 03 Oct 99 - 02:17 PM

click

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: wildlone
Date: 03 Oct 99 - 02:22 PM

keep trying click

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: wildlone
Date: 03 Oct 99 - 02:29 PM

it worked now you can see what i get up to.
Thats when i havnt got a broken arm and bruises in unmentionable places

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Matthew B.
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 05:24 PM

ANDREW ROSE

Andrew Rose, the British sailor
Now to you his woes I'll name
'Twas on the passage from Barbados
Whilst on board the Martha Jane.

CHO: Wasn't that most cruel usage
Without a friend to interpose?
How they've whipped and mangled, gagged and strangled
The British sailor, Andrew Rose.

'Twas on the quarter-deck they laid him,
Gagged him with an iron bar;
Wasn't that most cruel usage
To put upon a British tar?

'Twas up aloft the Captain sent him
Naked beneath the burning sun,
Whilst the mate did follow after,
Lashing him till the blood did run.

The captain gave him stuff to swallow;
Stuff to you I will not name,
Whilst the crew got sick with horror,
While on board the Mary Jane.

'Twas in a water-cask they put him;
Seven long days they kept him there.
When loud for mercy Rose did venture,
The Captain swore no man should go there.

For twenty days they did ill-use him,
When into Liverpool they arrived.
The Judge he heard young Andrew's story;
"Captain Rodgers, you must die."

Come all ye friends and near relations,
And all ye friends to interpose;
Never treat a British sailor
Like they did young Andrew Rose.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 05:42 PM

Mary Had a little Lamb Its Flece was white as snowAnd every where that Mary went The lamb was sure to go Cheers Bill

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 05:48 PM

Try again Mary had a little lamb its flece was white as snow And everywhere etc. Cheers Bill

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 06:10 PM

Try Again>bk< Mary had a littil lamb>bk< >bk< its fleece was white as snow and everywhere that mary went the lamb was sure to go Cheers Bill

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 06:10 PM

Try Again>bk< Mary had a littil lamb>bk< >bk< its fleece was white as snow and everywhere that mary went the lamb was sure to go Cheers Bill

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 06:14 PM

Try again

Mary had a little lamb
Its flece was white as snow
And everywhere that mary went
the lamb was sure to go

Cheers Bill

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 06:20 PM

That got the line break working now for the blue clicky thing click here!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 06:24 PM

second try click here

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 06:33 PM

third trylink to email adderss Click

Link to Web Site click here

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 06:39 PM

Fourth Try to web site blue clicky thing

Fourth try to email click Here

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 06:45 PM

Well I got the blue clicky but both the website and email did not come up I'll try again
click here

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 12 Oct 99 - 06:47 PM

Try again
click

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: MudGuard
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 06:17 AM

Hello Bill,
for the email: <a href=mailto:emailaddress>Mail me</a>

For the blue clicky thingies: remove the www.mudcat.org from the href part. The href part looks like http://www.mudcat.org/thesiteyouwant now although it should be http://thesiteyouwant
HTH,
MudGuard

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 09:26 AM

G'day,
Note that it's important to include the http:// part of the address, otherwise the current site, in this case www.mudcat.org, is added, resulting in a non-existant url.

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird)
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 10:00 AM

Practicing:

here is one here is another

characters:
&153 ASCII 153 ?
&172 ASCII 172 ?
&177 ASCII 177 ?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Okeimockbird
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 10:08 AM

Try again:

&177; Ascii 177 ? &153; Ascii 153 ? &152; Ascii 152 ?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 10:40 AM

another try:
&#B5;
&#"B5";

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 10:42 AM

still another

&B5;
&0000B5;

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 10:53 AM

yet again,

µ ¼ Æ

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 10:55 AM

Hey, it worked!

Now:

asdfghjkl

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 11:19 AM

More practice:

attendite vos domini cati rhetorici

hear me, you gentlemen writers

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 13 Oct 99 - 11:24 AM

More practice:

attendite vos domini cati rhetorici terras longas tenentes et autietis de mirabiliis

hear me, you gentlemen writers with your big estates, and you will hear of wonders

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: MudGuard
Date: 14 Oct 99 - 01:54 AM

Okiermockbird, that's wrong!
to hear is in Latin audire, so it has to be ... et audietis de ...

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 14 Oct 99 - 07:06 AM

Thanks Mudguard I'll try againMail Me

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 14 Oct 99 - 07:11 AM

Now for the web site oneclick here

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: bill\sables
Date: 14 Oct 99 - 07:13 AM

Many thanks Mudguard and Allan I have got them to work now Cheers Bill

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird)
Date: 14 Oct 99 - 01:07 PM

MudGuard, it was a typo! Sheesh! T.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 14 Oct 99 - 01:47 PM

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 18 Oct 99 - 11:23 AM

try again,

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Oct 99 - 04:32 PM

I'd say you've got the technique down, Anonymous. Just remember that Max doesn't want images in the regular threads - it can make the threads very slow to load. If you want to refer to images elsewhere on the Web, it's better to use clickable links (but practicing in this thread is considered admirable, and you did well indeed.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Okiemockbird
Date: 19 Oct 99 - 04:41 PM

That was me, Joe. Just wanted to make sure my first success with an image wasn't a fluke. T.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Melbert
Date: 20 Oct 99 - 04:03 PM

Mary had a little lamb The shepherd go five years Did that work?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: topical tom
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 09:45 PM

(font colours)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: topical tom
Date: 11 Mar 08 - 03:16 PM

Hope this works

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: CapriUni
Date: 15 Mar 10 - 12:56 PM

Trying to keep track of Unordered Lists, and the names for their "bullets."

• List item type="circle"


• List item type="square"


• List item Type="disc"


• List Item type="box"
(?)

No, it's not "box," clearly. How do you get the cornered counterpart to the white circle?

(Note: Funny thing -- the first time I previewed this post, the list item tag didn't take effect, and it showed up as the default black dot. But the second time I previewed this post (without actually changing the code for that line, it did take effect, and the square was square. What give?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Mar 10 - 02:06 PM

It looks like there ain't an open square - htmlhelp.com says:


The deprecated TYPE attribute of LI suggests the rendering of the list item marker. Possible values are as follows:

•Case-insensitive values for LI within a UL, DIR, or MENU:
◦disc (a filled-in circle)
◦square (a square outline)
◦circle (a circle outline)
•Case-sensitive values for LI within an OL:
◦1 (decimal numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...)
◦a (lowercase alphabetic: a, b, c, d, e, ...)
◦A (uppercase alphabetic: A, B, C, D, E, ...)
◦i (lowercase Roman numerals: i, ii, iii, iv, v, ...)
◦I (uppercase Roman numerals: I, II, III, IV, V, ...)

Style sheets provide greater flexibility in suggesting list item styles. The list-style property of CSS includes the added abilities to suppress list item markers, use images as markers, and more.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Mr Happy
Date: 16 Mar 10 - 09:45 AM

‚»‚ê‚Íaim'‚̂悤‚É‚»‚±‚ÉŒ©‚¦‚é; tŠJ‚¢‚½쳌³•ûŒ`- htmlhelp.com‚ÍŒ¾‚¤: —›‚Ì"ñ"‚ꂽŒ^'®쳌«ƒŠƒXƒg쳌€–Úƒ}쳌[ƒJ쳌[‚̃Œƒ"ƒ_ƒŠƒ"ƒO‚ð'ñˆÄ‚·‚é쳌B ‰Â"\‚ȉ¿'l‚ÍŽŸ‚Ì'Ê‚è‚ ‚é: UL쳌ADIR쳌A‚Ü‚½‚̓쳌ƒjƒ…쳌["à‚Ì—›‚Ì‚½‚ß‚Ì•C‚Ìas–³Š´Šo‚ȉ¿'l: ◦disc (‰~–ž‚½‚Ìa) ◦square (쳌³•ûŒ`‚Ì—ÖŠs) ◦circle (‰~‚Ì—ÖŠs) OL"à‚Ì—›‚Ì‚½‚ß‚Ì•C‚Ìas•qŠ´‚ȉ¿'l: ◦1 (10쳌i쳌": 1쳌A2쳌A3쳌A4쳌A5쳌A쳌c) ◦a (쳌¬•¶Žš‚̃Aƒ‹ƒtƒ@ƒxƒbƒg: a쳌Ab쳌Ac쳌Ad쳌Ae쳌A쳌c) ◦A ('啶Žš‚̃Aƒ‹ƒtƒ@ƒxƒbƒg: A쳌AB쳌AC쳌AD쳌AE쳌A쳌c) ◦I (쳌¬•¶Žš‚̃쳌쳌[ƒ}쳌"Žš: I쳌AII쳌Aiii쳌Aiv쳌Av쳌A쳌c) ◦I ('啶Žš‚̃쳌쳌[ƒ}쳌"Žš: I쳌AII쳌AIII쳌AIV쳌AV쳌A쳌c) ƒXƒ^ƒCƒ‹ƒV쳌[ƒg‚̓ŠƒXƒg쳌€–Ú—lŽ®‚Ì'ñˆÄ‚Ì‚æ‚è'å‚«‚¢쳌_"î쳌«‚ð'ñ‹Ÿ‚·‚é쳌B CSS‚̃ŠƒXƒg—lŽ®‚Ì"Á쳌«‚̓ŠƒXƒg쳌€–Úƒ}쳌[ƒJ쳌[‚ð—}쳌§‚·‚é‰Á‚¦‚ç‚ꂽ‹@"\‚ðŠÜ‚݃}쳌[ƒJ쳌[‚Æ‚µ‚ăCƒ쳌쳌[ƒW쳌A‚»‚µ‚Ä'½‚­‚ðŽg—p‚µ쳌B

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Mr Red
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 09:31 AM

To get any the characters using std fonts, I will put a page on my site tonight.

I used it for the Russian page and the Norske page in the meantime - if you want to look for hash codes.

Subject: HashCodes-Я-Us
From: Mr Red
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 05:58 AM

hash codes generator

My hash code page works fine on FF2 & FF3.6 and Mozilla 1.7.8 and IE5.5 but not IE 7.0.573.blah blah blah

Anyone who has an idea why I would appreciate a clue.

I am sure it is a case of JavaScript Objects and finding an attribute that still is valid. (Bloody Micro$oft still vainly trying to rule the world).

It is sort of useful for odd languages Like Russian or Tamil) and it is graphical. Copy the code and paste in a text editor (eg the Mudcat text Box). I may add a convert address to hash codes for copy & paste purposes.

but the raison dêtre is to hide txt from spammers. Like addresses. I have done it for years and it works, because they trawl for addresses on web pages and inspect the text. Translation from codes would take too long for the billions of pages they trawl.

Now did the Subject line translate?

Subject: HashCodes-Я -Us
From: Mr Red
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 06:01 AM

Hey! It worked in the subject line,
see above.
though it does throw in spaces I didn't intend. Edit them out.
Best of Luck.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 05:49 AM

All the HTML I know, I learned at Mudcat. With it I built the Spirituals permathread. It's serving me well at our parish website, too:




New!

CLICK HERE
to see parish life in the summertime
(a short video montage).



And it's great to have a thread to practice little tricks before screwing up a project!


Thanks, Mudcat!

~Susan

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Dec 10 - 07:25 PM

I'd like to figure out how to deal with the apostrophes and quotation marks in this post. Mudcat will read apostrophes and quotation marks if they're straight up and down, but not if they're angled. I keep wondering if this is a Mac problem, since I most often see the problem in posts from Amos, our most infamous Mac user.
Anybody have a solution?

---

"Can't Understand" - A song composed about the devastating earthquake in Christchurch in New Zealand - where with stringent building codes and the early morning timing when city streets were empty, there was major property damage and some injuries, but nobody died.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUmov1ElyTY

At 4:36am on September the 4th 2010 Christchurch was woken by a huge 7.1 magnitude earthquake, causing buildings to collapse, roads to crack and power and water outages right throughout Christchurch and neighbouring areas.


Can't Understand written and sung by Jeremy Cooper
(Levin, New Zealand)

On the 4th of September 2010
4:35 in the morning
Christchurch New Zealand began to shake
Earthquake came without warning

Throughout the region new fault lines appeared
Cracks in the earth were alarming
Soil turned to mud, And bricks tumbled down
Flooding and horror abounding x2

I can't understand in the darkness that day
How nobody died.
Some people gave thanks to their God
And some, oh.... the tears they cried

Bob Parker the mayor was quick to the scene
Calm and cool as cucumber
John Key the leader of the land
Said to the queen: " Can't make it"
No time for tea 'cos Canterbury 's
Recovery needs funding.
Both were surprised, no-one was killed
Having viewed the quake's devastation

(NZ Prime Minister was due to fly to the UK to attend an a
fternoon tea function in London with the queen- cancelled it)

We can't understand in the darkness that day
How nobody died
Some people gave thanks to their god
And some, oh...... the tears they cried

Sad to say looters came the next day
But alongside heroes a-plenty
Some gave their money, some gave their time
Some with love did their duty
Many worked hour upon hour
Depriving the sandman his bounty
All of them had a cry in their hearts,
A question they kept on repeating,
A question they kept on repeating

We can't understand in the darkness that day
How nobody died
Some people gave thanks to their God
And some, oh...... the tears they cried

We can't understand in the darkness that day
How nobody died.. How nobody died....How nobody died

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Dec 10 - 07:26 PM

Hmmm. They all disappeared. No problems now.....

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Dec 10 - 02:24 AM

Joe - re quotes & apostrophes

The HTML specification uses straight quotes to mark "strings" of characters that don't require interpretation, and "curly quotes" don't work universally in code, although a few sites have added interpreters to read them in code.

Since it mucks up the code, it's best to "turn off curly quotes" in your Word, which turns them off in all your Office programs. When you turn them on/off for quotes, they're also turned on/off for apostrophes.

It's handy to know that in Word, if curly quotes are turned on or off, you can Edit|Replace Replace All " with " and all the quotes will be changed to whatever's the current setting. (i.e. Word Replace recognizes both forms, and replaces with whatevers the current setting.) You have to separately replace ' with ' if you want them changed also.

The straight double quote is hex code 0022, so &#x0022; should print it, but it gets cumbersome to code all of them in codes, so it's better to set up to type them "straight."

Straight Single Quote can be coded &#x0027;      '
Straight Double Quote can be coded &0022;        "
Left Single Quote can be coded &#x2018;          ‘
Right Single Quote can be coded &#x2019;        ’
Left Double Quote can be coded &#x201C;        “
Right Double Quote can be coded &#x201D;       ”

Of course you can convert the hex numbers to their decimal equivalents and leave out the "x" in the codes, but I'm too lazy to work the conversions at the moment.

You can also use "curlies" in preformatted text with <pre> in front of the text and </pre> at the end, and they should come across in a post, although using the preformat tag can also get clumsy.

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Dec 10 - 02:47 AM

Well, I left out a #x in the straight double quote code, but you get the message. (&#x0022;)

The reason Amos posts stuff full of curlies is that he's kinky and has his WP set to "Fancy Dan Mode." (I'm told.) The reason lots of his posts are full of "unintelligible meaningless characters" is because he uses a Mac and/or copies lots of his stuff from people who do, and he NEVER PROOFS HIS CUT-N-PASTE POSTS. . . . ; > }

(A more likely explanation is that he's copied from html that used quotes to identify the lines as "text strings." Those quotes would be usually be hidden in the "interpreted html" on his browser but would copy. If he pasted in his WP program and re-copied to a post, they might get converted to "curlies" which would (sometimes) show in his post.)

Since they didn't show in your test post, it's a guess as to where they were.

Macs do still have some deviant characters on the keyboards, although it varies with the OS version.

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Artful Codger
Date: 18 Dec 10 - 07:12 PM

The PRE tag doesn't solve the problem, since the raw characters are simply illegal characters for HTML (per the character encoding specified for Mudcat pages, which users here have no control over). In fact, the PRE tag may cause proper escape sequences not to be recognized as such, but to be printed literally as they were input, with the ampersands, digits and semicolons.

See these threads for my scripts (htmlesc.py and HtmlEsc.java) which encode text on the clipboard, and search for other text conversions threads for links to online utilities that will do roughly the same thing, if you don't mind a bit more copy-and-pasting. If you use them, your "smart" quotes, dashes, symbols, non-English characters and what have you should end up looking correct, though you'll still need to add formatting tags for bolding, italics and such.

This topic has been covered to F'ing death in other threads, though I'm too lazy to locate or index them. It would be nice to have a moderated PermaThread that summarizes the info and links to the other, more exhaustive threads, so that when this topic arises again and again (as it invariably will), one can simply link to the PermaThread.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 18 Dec 10 - 09:19 PM

Whatever you are posting...
Cut and Paste
Word Processer

Before uploading ... run it through a basic (any) TEXT editor.
Reduce it to the lowest common element ASCI....
Add the HTML afterwards.

There are multiple sources across the the net to "test" your HTML ... unfortunately, today ... few Net-A-Zins do.... In the "old days" bad HTML was like farting-in-an-elevator. Blessedly...the Mudcat has exhaust-fans in the form of Joe-Clones to exit the fumes.

Of course, MC has preview...which should, perhaps, maybe, become a default posting process.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

In the earliest Max Days ... an entire thread could be tinted ... by accident of course.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 02:24 AM

Hi, Garg-
I thought that would work - paste the text into notepad and save it as a text file, and close it; then open the text file and copy it and paste it into Mudcat - but it didn't work. The curly apostrophes and quotation marks were still there, and turned out as garble on Mudcat. What I did above was copy the defective text from a browser, and then close the browser window and paste it into Mudcat in another browser window.

But now I have to wait for Amos to post another garbagy post so I can see if I can duplicate my solution.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: MudGuard
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 02:47 AM

>> In the earliest Max Days ... an entire thread could be tinted ... by accident of course.

It was also possible to let disappear everything beyond your own text including the form for answering. So any user could "close" a thread.

This was possible by opening (but not closing) an html comment ( <!-- ).
Now that is no longer possible, when you submit such a comment opening, you get an error message "contains an invalid html element"

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 05:29 AM

Practice/Test post for receational purposes only.
Not ready for publication.

From a web page where I found what appears to be the article pasted by Amos at BS: Lies about MSNBC 18 Dec 10 - 11:07 AM, I find the broken characters that appear in Amos' post, copied and pasted into Windows Word where they display the same, as:

Ò         has hex code 00D2 and is intended to be a left double quote.
In Windows Word a left double quote is coded as hex code 201C which displays as “

Ó         has hex code 00D3 and is intended to be a right double quote.
In Windows Word a right double quote is coded as hex code 201D which displays as ”

Ô         has hex code 00D4 and is intended to be a left single quote.
In Windows Word a left single quote is coded as hex code 2018 which displays as ‘

Õ         has hex code 00D5 and is intended to be a right single quote.
In Windows Word a right single quote is coded as hex code 2019 which displays as ’

Р        has hex code 00D0 and is intended to be an n-dash.
In Windows Word an n-dash is coded as hex code 2013 which displays as –

Windows Word codes as m-dash as hex code 2014 which displays as —
If the process Amos used in the paste viewed continues the same "character order" it would be expected that his source would code an m-dash as hex code 00D1, which would display as Ñ, but no example was found in the text I found for comparison, although I believe the Ñ appears in other of his paste jobs.

Unicode assigns a hex code to each typographical character using the range of numbers from 0000 through FFFF. The assignment is to a "typographical function" represented by the character name, and a "generic glyph" representing a common symbol that may be used to display the character is shown for reference. The glyph (picture) of the character is for reference only and is not a required part of the specification.

A "complete" Unicode font that includes all the printable characters runs to approximately 32MB per font, for the two known Windows fonts available. Loading one is NOT RECOMMENDED except where absolutely required for a specific purpose.

A font (or typeface for purists) may assign any "picture" to any hex code. Your computer loads character pages, usually two or three or up to nine or ten at a time, as necessary to make the characters in the font(s) you select available to a "document." It is normal to load additional char pages containing characters beyond the single font you select, since it is common to use "out of font characters" fairly frequently. If a code is entered that is not in one of the loaded char pages, the program should try to find and load a new char page for another font that contains a character assigned to that code number, and usually the glyph that results will resemble the illustrative generic glyph for the code number in Unicode, unless a char page that is loaded has assigned that code to a different glyph.

The codes assigned to the curly quotes and m and n-dashes in Windows Word correspond to the Unicode assignments for those characters. (But they still may not be recognized if they creep into html codings.)

The codes that Windows Word reads in the paste by Amos appear in a range assigned for non-printing control codes. Since these control codes are almost never used in desktop programs, this appearance suggests that the Mac has created font pages containing the glyphs at hex codes that would otherwise be "unused" in any normal Mac program. The glyphs displayed in Windows are "real" but it would take some searching to find each one at a "proper" Unicode hex position. (Lots of the glyphs look almost identical but have different uses.)

Since the page from which I copied the "original" that I believe Amos copied from displays normally in my Windows browser and pastes into a mudcat post (preview) that displays without corrupted characters, and I can copy his corrupted posts and they display on my machine as posted, it is reasonable to assume that the corruption happens on Amos' computer and is an artifact of his setup.

The Unicode specification permits assignment of arbitrary glyphs to unused codes, and in fact groups of code numbers are deliberately left unassigned for that purpose. Windows Word in US versions assigns the "euro" symbol to the decimal code 0128 (hex 0080) simply because it's unassigned in ASCI/ANSII and in Unicode, and permits the Alt-Numpad method of entry. The assigned Unicode euro is at hex 20AC €, and should be on most European keyboards. (not to be confused with the deprecated hex 20A0 ₠)

The Windows Character Map will show either a decimal (for ASCII/ANSI range) or hex code for each character when you hover over it. For common fonts, the lower numbered chars correspond to the the Unicode character assignments, but "out of range" char codes shown may not be the Unicode number for the glyph displayed/printed. A few fonts (as discovered for Webdings recently) have no codes that correspond to Unicode characters that even remotely resemble the Webdings chars, so you cannot use the code numbers alone to display those glyphs in a web posting.

The use of a code that's technically assigned to a Unicode typographical character or control function because of "unlikely use" is a bit shady, but may meet some purpose appropriate to Macs, and is in fact also done in some Windows fonts. The codes that Windows Word reads from the pasting show glyphs that may be similarly mapped in a Windows char page when displayed in Windows browsers, but may or may not display the intended characters or the ones displayed in Windows in a Mac browser.

It's also possible that Amos has font/char pages loaded that are not "standard Mac" that might account for him seeing something the rest of us don't. In that case we can only guess whether what he sees are "visions" or just "hallucinations."

Changing his setup to use straight quotes rather than curly quotes should eliminate the problem, since the necessary straight quotes all exist in the ASCII/ANSI range and are unlikely to be "substituted." There might still be a problem with the "typographical dashes" but he'd have to try it (and admit to it) for us to know, unless someone else with a Mac would care to try to check it out.

Comments welcome if received before I get tired of playing with it.

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Artful Codger
Date: 19 Dec 10 - 06:25 PM

The reason is simple: the typical Windows and (older) Mac code pages don't correspond fully to the Unicode set (values in the 00-FF range correspond to ISO-Latin-1, not Win 1295 or Mac-Roman). And the default character encoding for HTML is 7-bit ASCII only, so any characters outside the standard ASCII set, regardless of encoding, are technically illegal HTML; their representation is left to the vagaries of the browser, the user's locale and other inconsistent factors across the user base.

Since Mudcat pages deal strictly with raw 8-bit characters, not 16-bit as for Unicode's UTF-16 sets, any text posted into Mudcat messages must be coerced by either the user's system or Mudcat itself into some 8-bit mapping. Unfortunately, the source system doesn't know what encoding Mudcat assumes or will apply once the text is submitted, and Mudcat doesn't know what encoding the source text is represented in--by the time it hits Mudcat, it's just a string of bytes (with, hopefully, ASCII as a subset of the source encoding).

Nowadays, when someone copies text onto their clipboard, it becomes available in multiple formats, and usually, Unicode is one of those options--any Unicode encoding can be converted on the fly to any other without confusion. And the problem would not exist if (1) all text pasted into the text area were converted to Unicode by the paste operation itself and (2) Mudcat automatically converted all text beyond 00FF to HTML escape sequences (7-bit ASCII chars only). But we know that neither of these requirements is being met. The characters aren't arriving in the entry box as Unicode because, if they were, the same encoding would always be used for the same source characters. (Is there an option to specify the input encoding expected for a text area widget?) And we know that Mudcat doesn't automatically convert (most( raw characters/Unicode codepoints to escaped HTML just from all the unescaped "foreign" characters visible in HTML source views. If specifying a Unicode input encoding would force incoming text to Unicode automatically, Max could force the HTML escaping unconditionally, without ambiguity, and the problem should never (or only rarely) arise again--Wingdings aside.

But for some reason--probably because the text entry box is configured (by default?) to accept only 8-bit character input--the browser paste operation has to bypass Unicode and default instead to some locale-specific 8-bit encoding, and there the major problem lies.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 20 Dec 10 - 03:46 AM

david -

Your "explanation" appears to be quite correct, but it's not the explanation for the problem at hand.

When Amos copies from another website and pastes and posts it here, it looks like garbage to the rest of us. (Not a comment on content, just on the broken characters.)

If I go to the same website Amos copied from and copy the same thing he copied, and paste and post it here, it looks like the original site we both copied. This works even if I don't replace curly quotes with straight ones, although it's easy enough to do on my machine and I would if the post preview showed that I needed to.

We don't know whether Amos pastes the copied article into his wordprocessor and then copies from there to paste here, although it would be suspected that he does. IFF he pastes it into his Mac WP, his computer apparently translates the "real world curly quotes" into "Mac curly quotes" that have different code numbers than the rest of the world uses. That "translation" would be necessary in order for it to look right in his WP. But when he posts it here the "curlies" appear as junk characters.

The problem is NOT with mudcat or with the html interpreters at mudcat or on our individaul machines, since I can code "anything that works" and it's okay in the post. I can also code "anything that works," preview it here, copy the preview pane - converted to display html - back into the input pane, (I'd preview again) and post, and it ALWAYS WORKS. I can put all sorts of strange characters in a Windows Word document, and for nearly all of them I can copy from Word and paste directly into the mudcat reply box, and IT WORKS without coding "extended characters" in nearly all cases. Only characters that my computer codes in non-standard ways will break, and thus far the webdings font is the only one I've found with significant numbers of "non-standard" char codes on Windows machines.

In other words, everybody except Amos can copy from any html that displays correctly in their browser and paste to mudcat and it will display correctly here. Only (mostly) Amos always f*cks up his pastes. (There actually are a couple of other people who suffer from the same curse occasionally, but for the most part sometimes the others get one right.)

The puzzle here is to guess what Amos could do to make his paste-ups more legible for the rest of us, since I suspect that every so often one of his pastes might be interesting to read. then we'll have to decide whether to tell Amos, or just sit back and smirk at his warped chars.

Note that this isn't just a mudcat problem. Several years of professional wordprocessing and publishing layout/setup work have made it clear that there are differences between outputs from Mac and Win machines, and pinning down where the differences come from would make it a lot easier to handle them outside the real world at mudcat.

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Artful Codger
Date: 20 Dec 10 - 10:55 AM

I ran a simple conversion test, pasting mixed text from a source plain text file (Unicode by default, or I couldn't have mixed these particular characters). What you see below corresponds to what I saw; I've escaped characters to ensure this message will display properly.

Input:
e é č э

Output (per preview page):
e é &#269; &#1101;


What do I conclude from this?

Since the text all appeared in the message box exactly as I pasted it from the source document, the text area widget must be accepting the text as Unicode--no single 8-bit code page contains all these characters; the only other alternative would have been for the text to contain embedded codepage change directives, which I seriously doubt.

The text widgets don't know they're specifically dealing with HTML or text to be converted to HTML, so the conversions which were performed (on the latter two characters) were done by Mudcat. This, by the way, is relatively new behavior; I've tried similar tests with Czech and Cyrillic before, and there was no automatic conversion.

Because the Czech and Cyrillic characters were converted automatically, Max must have realized that any character value greater than xFF must be a Unicode value, and hence safe to convert. Presumably, this includes all smart quotes, long dashes, Euro symbols, etc. whenever the text arrives in the message box as Unicode (but not as codepage-encoded text). I haven't tested what happens if you directly type in text, since my presumption is that all direct text entry will be Unicode by default.

The fact that Max has not employed a similar automatic conversion for characters in the 00-FF range suggests that he knows text is still arriving in the text area encoded according to locale-specific codepage mappings; it is not always being converted to Unicode by the user's paste operation. And because no information is transferred to indicate which encoding was used, it's unsafe to apply a default (like Unicode/ISO-Latin-1) which would munge text pasted as ISO-Latin-5, Win 1295 or KOI8-R. These would likely misdisplay to most users anyway, but at least one can get the right display by changing display settings. Once the characters are escaped, they will only display according to the Unicode characters for those escapes.

Note that, even when raw 8-bit characters are posted, they are likely converted to Unicode byte pairs, preserving the 8-bit value even if the corresponding Unicode mapping does not correspond to that character. It is up to the recipient of the entered text (here, Mudcat) to decide how to handle the values. On the other hand, for the text to be displayed "correctly" still to the user (prior to previewing) there must be some intelligence informing the browser what encoding was used. This is where I'm still confused, as the text box appears to behave according to both worlds simultaneously! Can it be that the input encoding is available from the text area widget, but Mudcat isn't asking for it?

Because the 80-FF range is not converted automatically, these "raw" characters constitute improper HTML, and will display according to locale and browser vagaries as previously indicated. It's the last big hole.

This doesn't get us much closer to solving Amos's problem, but it does clarify a few things about input handling.

Subject: RE: Input conversion
From: Artful Codger
Date: 20 Dec 10 - 11:19 AM

Now, John contends that only a few users (like Amos) are entering text which will misdisplay. As a Mac user, with different native codepage mappings from Windows users, I know this to be false. I see many pages where folks are posting raw 8-bit characters instead of escaped characters, and the result is munged text to non-Windows users (or users in different locales). I don't know when the most recent auto-conversion changes were implemented, but within the last month or so I have seen postings entered in Cyrillic which were not converted to proper escapes. Presumably, if they had been received as Unicode, they would have been (like the fourth character in my test). And presumably they appeared correct to the poster, both in the input box before posting and in the thread after posting. Conclusion: what YOU see (as an American or English Windows user), even in preview, is not necessarily what others will see. And a quick peek at source views will bear out what I'm saying. If it ain't escaped and it ain't 7-bit ASCII, it ain't right.

That said, why would text arrive natively encoded, in this age where Unicode transfer is the preferred method? I've got some ideas, but I don't have time to present them now.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 21 Dec 10 - 03:01 PM

At the link given in the post that started it all:

BS: Lies about MSNBC 18 Dec 10 - 11:07 AM

I see broken characters for all the "curly quotes" (double and single) and apostrophes in the post by Amos. In other of his posts hyphens appear to come through okay, but the (rare) n-dash and the more common m-dash are also broken. Since nobody has argued about whether they see them as broken, I must assume that others also see them displayed that way - or weren't interested enough to look at what was being discussed.

I can go to the source page he copied from and paste it into Word. When I copy it back into a mudcat "Reply to Thread" box and preview it (or post it) it posts normally with no broken characters.

Comments at by Grishka, at the link and one following a couple of posts below, may be close to explaining the "problem" I've been playing with.

At the second link, Guest,Grishka suggests changing encoding. If I change the encoding for my browser to UTF-8 the broken characters change to char FFFD (which normally represents an undefined char) and I can no longer tell whether they're left double quotes or right double quotes. A couple of other encodings show slightly different chars for the broken ones; but I can't get rid of them by using any of the different encodings I've tried. Of course I haven't tried all the possible languages (128 of them IIRC), or even the 18 different flavors of English that IE and Office offer. I didn't see "Canuck" as an encoding.

Note that although it's generally believed that Amos uses a Mac, what he does should not be assumed to be representative of Mac users in general. The broken pastes may actually be done by his weasel dogs when he's not looking. His posts, however, are generally consistent whenever he pastes from outside sources, with the same (and some other) char breaks as in the sample.

I've archived comments here that are of interest to me. Since this is an edited thread I assume it will all go away when the rest of you are finished playing with the problem.

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Artful Codger
Date: 21 Dec 10 - 11:56 PM

[Pardon if this is a duplicate post, but my previous posting of it appears to have disappeared in the Mudcat ether.]


If you view the page source for Amos's message, you'll see that the characters in question are unescaped--improper HTML. If you view the page using the Mac-Roman encoding, his message shows properly. (If your browser lacks the Mac-Roman encoding as an option, it is deficient. Use a real browser instead--one that recognizes a world beyond Windows.)

Similarly, if you source-view posts from Windows users, you'll often see literal Windows smart quotes rather than the escape sequences which are the only proper HTML for non-ASCII characters (when the default page encoding is used, as on Mudcat). If you view these posts with your browser's encoding set to Mac-Roman, which is a feasible setting for Mac users, these quotes will appear munged. Select a number of other feasible encodings for different locales, and the quotes will also appear munged in some.

So Amos has only done (from a Mac) what Windows users commonly do here. To him the pasted text appears and previews properly--he can't tell just from looking that there will be any problem for other users. No more than can Windows users, who see their own miscoded messages properly, in both previews and after posting. The problem is far more extensive than you've noticed.


I performed another little test. First, I created a WP document containing mixed text (as in my test above) followed by the string "hello", which gave me smart quotes. This I copied to a plain-text editor (TextEdit) and saved as UTF-8. Then I copied the hello string with quotes to another plain-text editor window and saved as Mac-Roman. (I didn't copy the other characters, as some would not be expressible in the Mac-Roman encoding.) Then I pasted from these three sources into a Mudcat entry box and previewed. Here is what I found.

Pasting from the Mac-Roman plain-text file when my browser's encoding setting for the page was Mac-Roman (as Amos probably has set by default) produced Mac-Roman smart quotes, which Mudcat failed to translate to HTML smart quote escapes. When I switched the view encoding to Win-1295 (as most Windows users would use), the quotes showed up as accented O's. So I've been able to easily duplicate what's happening in Amos's messages. NOTE: The quotes in the entry box itself continued to show as quotes; only the preview was affected.

More unexpectedly, if I previewed again after changing the encoding, but not the text, I got unescaped Windows smart quotes.

Pasting the Mac-Roman plain-text directly to the browser when the browser's encoding setting was Win-1295 produced unescaped Windows smart quotes as well.

Pasting the mixed text directly from the word processor (iWorks Pages, which is Unicode-based), with browser encoding Win-1295 gave me only two properly encoded characters: the Czech and the Russian; the accented e and the smart quotes remained as literals with the quotes converted to Windows smart quotes. Pasting with browser encoding Mac-Roman yielded Mac-Roman smart quotes. I got the same results pasting from the UTF-8 plain-text file.

Conclusions:
Regardless of the source, the text is being converted to a native encoding according to the browser's encoding setting. It would appear that for any character not within the selected encoding, the (16-bit) Unicode value is returned; otherwise, the 8-bit code for the encoding is returned.

The problem is not because Amos is doing anything odd; it's because Mudcat is inadequately handling the input. If Mudcat is going to allow unescaped characters outside the 7-bit ASCII range, then it needs to query for the encoding information, convert everything to Unicode and then convert the non-ASCII characters properly to HTML escapes. Note that the retrieved text might contain sections with different encodings. It may also contain characters (like certain wingdings) with no Unicode equivalents; these should just be dropped or replaced by a question mark.

As it stands, Mudcat doesn't escape any characters within the 8-bit range, that is, within your native encoding (or the view encoding active for the page). Thus, even though the Unicode glyphs for smart quotes, apostrophes, long dashes, copyright symbols and such are outside the 8-bit range, other encodings map them (inconsistently) to values within the 8-bit range, so they remain unescaped by Mudcat. The same applies to the most common accented characters a European might use, and to the native language characters for Slavic, Greek and Hebrew users--all remain unescaped, and hence munged for viewers in different locales!

Why don't you see the problem from other Mac users more often? Due to the Windows bias on the net, most of us end up setting our default browser encoding to Win-1295, so the majority of improperly encoded web pages will view as they were intended. Consequently, when we post text containing unescaped smart quotes, even though they're Unicode or Mac quotes in our source, they're converted to unescaped Windows quotes. I stress that this is no more "correct", even if fewer users are disconcerted. Only escaped smart quotes and such are universally viewed correctly.

Web page input widgets must be able to indicate both the encodings used and the switches between them. And I know most programming/scripting environments provide conversion functions to translate natively-encoded text to Unicode and back. So I would expect that a solution is rather straightforward to implement. If Max would give me read access to the source code, perhaps I could whip up a fix, or at least describe more specifically the changes to try.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Dec 10 - 01:37 AM

Some of this stuff you guys are posting looks very interesting. Remember that this is a practice thread, and messages are subject to deletion. If you come up with anything worth saving, please put a copy in the Mudcat HTML Guide. I may move some of your messages there myself.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 22 Dec 10 - 06:26 AM

Joe -

The disappearing posts feature was the reason I started this last little bit here. Since I really had little notion of what was happening, I sort of hoped my babble would disappear, as soon as someone with an explanation came along.

I find it easy enouth to save mudcat threads for the most part, so I've archived (for my own use) the thread.

I generally save as "archived page" (.mht) since it avoids the breakage that results if you move or rename a simpe save (.html) - in case that might be handy for anyone elss to explore.

It should also be noted that if you save an edited thread that gets edited, the next time you save that same edited thread it overwrites the previous save, since the thread name doesn't change. If you want to save and keep a particular version, you need to edit the name of the saved file you don't want overwritten.

(It's just like at the US Supreme Court decisions site, where EVERYTHING you save from there has the same filename unless you change each one as you tuck it away. (At least theirs are nearly always PDFs.) It also happens at a lot of web pages that offer a "print version." The "printable" page is nearly alwasy named the same - the name of the "make printable" machine rather than the article name - if you pull up the printable and then just save a copy of it.)

Also, if you go into a thread here "by pages" and save "page 1" and then "page 2" you'll find you only have the last one saved when you get done - unless you edit the filename for each one so that each group of 50 posts has a different filename on your machine.

And thanks to all who commented, and especially to Artful Codger (21 Dec 10 - 11:56 PM). I'm not sure what I can do with it, but that last one was a lot better than "explanations" I've been able to find elsewhere.

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 03:52 PM

Èè
É

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 03:55 PM

Èr'

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 06:24 PM

 *** Songtitle,The.........(36spaces)..............  SONGWRITER(S) …27 (spaces)…  Performer(s) #

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 06:26 PM

Songtitle,The


By Writer's name

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 06:36 PM

SONG TITLE, THE


By Writer's Name

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 06:39 PM

 *** Songtitle,The.........(36spaces)..............  SONGWRITER(S) …27 (spaces)…  Performer(s) #

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 08:03 PM

 *** Songtitle,The.........(36spaces)..............  SONGWRITER(S) …27 (spaces)…  Performer(s) #

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 08:05 PM

SONG TITLE, THE


By Writer's Name

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 09:39 PM

GeoffLawes -

It appears that you might be trying to "line things up," perhaps in columns. This can be tricky in html for a couple of reasons.

Most posts are done with common fonts, in which the width of individual characters varies. It's easier if you use a monospaced font like Courier.

One reason is that html ignores multiple "spaces" and a string of several spaces will only display one space. You can force all of the spaces to be displayed by using a non-breaking space, but you need to code it as  . Of course when you insert the code in your layout the code takes more than one space and makes it difficult to get the same alingments as in the html when it displays on the web.

An alternative is to use a <pre> tag at the beginning of the stuff you want to line up, and of course a closing </pre> tag at the end of it all. The <pre> tag means "preformatted" and forces the text to display in a monospaced font and nearly always to display all the spaces.

  <pre>
  displays          text     like
  this in           sort     of columns
  among             other    things</pre>

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 09:44 PM

I forgot to code the code for the nonbreaking space, so the code I typed for the code printed a nonbreaking space.

Of course the code should be &nbsp; which has to be coded &amp;nbsp; to display &nbsp;

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 08:04 AM

Thanks John but its a link problem I am testing out rather than columns.
Here goes again
>Abraham Lincoln Brigade, The .......... JOHN McCUTCHEON ........... John McCutcheon #

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 08:06 AM

THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 08:10 AM

Result! Now I have just got to spot which item of code I missed out on the previous attempts.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Jeri
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 09:37 AM

There's no space between the hash(#) and the target. (If that's what you're taking about)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 04:53 PM

 *** Songtitle,The.........(36spaces)..............  SONGWRITER(S) …27 (spaces)…  Performer(s) #

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 04:56 PM

SONG TITLE, THE


By Writer's Name

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 05:21 PM

***Underneath The Spanish Stars

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 05:24 PM

STARS

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,Iona
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:20 AM

Practicing......

THIS SHOULD BE COLOR

if it's not, we have a problem, Houston...

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:54 AM

Try again.....

This ought to be color.......

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:57 AM

AAAAA!
Try again.
<#FF00FF> Really, this ought to be color.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:59 AM

Okay. Back to square one. What in the world is the HTML tag for color??

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Mr Happy
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 08:37 AM

god knows!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 06:24 PM

 *** Songtitle,The.........(36spaces)..............  SONGWRITER(S) …27 (spaces)…  Performer#

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 06:26 PM

SONG TITLE, THE


By Writer

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Noreen
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:13 PM

Like this, Iona?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Noreen
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:18 PM

Or magenta, as required?

(font color=magenta inside the triangular brackets to start is what you want)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:32 PM

Hi, Geoff -

You should able to put a "name" tag where you want. That would be
<a name=sillysound>
Then you should be able to put a link to that name like this:
<a href=#sillysound>(click)</a>
And then you should be able to go back to that reference name.

Does that make sense?
-Joe-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Jeri
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:38 PM

With no space between ther '#' and the name.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,Iona
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:43 AM

Ja, like that, Noreen. :D I wasn't really caring on what color it was, I was just trying to get color. Obviously it didn't work. Let me try again.....

Is this green?

HURRAH! It's GREEN! Hip hip hooray! Huzzah!

Now if only I can get the other colors to work.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,Iona
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:49 AM

this should be blue

Pink

Red?

Dorghhh! Why did they do that? I put 'magenta' and 'red' as the font colors---why in the world did they turn out aqua and green??

Help!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 05:00 AM

It appears you wrote:


<font color=navy#>this should be blue</font>

<font color=magenta#> Pink</font>

Try it without the #

<font color=blue>this should be blue</font>

this should be blue

To be "formallly correct" the color names you put in are "littorals" and should be enclosed in straight quotes, but as in other places omitting the quotes is usually acceptable. The color names you can use are limited to a few words defined by the standard, so you do need to avoid using unusual colors. Some browsers page interpreters are better than others at recognizing things like fuschia and chartreuse. Methods are also available for defining the colors by numerical codes that allow very broad latitude.

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 06:53 AM

Thank you Joe. It looked to me as if I was setting out the code exactly as you say ( I got it from you when I originally used it long ago anyway ) However, Jeri said above   
There's no space between the hash(#) and the target. (If that's what you're taking about)
which I did not understand at the time but having reconsidered the meaning of his advice I discovered that there was indeed a space between the hash and the target which I had not previously noticed. So here goes with another attempt. I am also trying out John's advice about colour which was a trigger to reconsidering Jeri's advice about the tricky properties of the hash.

 *** Songtitle,The.........(36spaces)..............  SONGWRITER(S) …27 (spaces)…  Performer(s) #

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 06:56 AM

SONG TITLE, THE


By Writer's Name

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 07:09 AM

Thank you Jeri, John and Joe
How many blokes whose names begin with the same phoneme does it take to change a piece of HTML code?
4

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Noreen
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 11:40 AM

Blokes and blokesses, Geoff :)

(Though Jeri may be happy to be called a bloke, in this context..?)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 07:08 PM

Thanks so much, John! That's my problem right there. Leave it to me to mess something obvious up. :D

Red!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 08:06 PM

Trying something.

.

Nope, didn't work. There is an open code for font size somewhere up the thread that is making the text outside the form at the bottom of the thread display large. When viewed in increments of 50 or fewer it isn't in the last page of posts. It is only visible if you open the entire thread.

SRS

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 08:18 PM

There is a reason for this:

---

Oh...I'm trying the same thing as SRS, with the same negative results.
Oh.....I got it.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 08:54 PM

OOps! Sorry about the inappropriate re-assignment Jeri.
How many blokes who have made unwarranted assumptions does it take to change a gender?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,Iona
Date: 13 Feb 12 - 02:33 AM

6 Day Creationist

Just practicing.


In the Beginning


God Created the


Heavens

and the


Earth

Young earth creationism....eureka! It's in the Bible.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,Iona
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 03:54 PM

How do you do the 'little letters' like we see the Mudelfs doing when they ad an addendum to someone's post?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Feb 12 - 08:34 PM

<font size=1>font size 1</font> font size 1

<font size=2> font size 2

<font size=3> font size 3

<font size=4> font size 4

<font size=5> font size 5

<font size=6> font size 6

Is this what you mean?

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,Iona
Date: 17 Feb 12 - 12:06 AM

Yep! Thanks a million, John! :)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Feb 12 - 02:02 AM

Note that I did leave the </font> off of all except the first size in the display versions. You really should have an "end" for each tag, or at least end them all with </font></font></font></font></font> ... at the end of the last font change. If you don't close each one and reopen a new one with each change, as you go, it's easy to lose track of how many times to end end end them.

There are also a couple of other standard ways of getting different text sizes with a "Title1" "Titel2" or "Header1" etc, but I find the simple numbers sufficient. The problem is that the page header may set an unusual size, so you sort of need to preview to see how big a particular number will look relative to the rest of the page.

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Aug 12 - 05:45 PM

€
¶
۞
☢
∑
♪
♫
♭
♩
♜
x੠

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Aug 12 - 06:00 PM

♖
Ζ
Σ
ς

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 21 Aug 12 - 06:57 PM

Ā
ā
Ō
ō
Ū

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Sep 12 - 08:24 PM

Señores, voy a cantarles
Llamado Jesú Güera Chabala

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 13 Sep 12 - 11:43 PM

Dear IONA

Look at the "view source " under the file area of your browser.

Placed in the greater than< ...and less than> ....brakets you will find a "font color=" and a size like "small " followed by perhaps another "small "....

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

The toilet in kansas...like the wizznin Oz wants to obfusicate the simplicity.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Sep 12 - 02:16 PM

Jesús Cadenas
(La Güera Chabela)
1
Señores voy a cantarles
De versos una quincena,
Para recorder un hombre
llamado Jesús Cadenas.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: van lingle
Date: 09 Oct 12 - 01:57 PM

blue

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: van lingle
Date: 09 Oct 12 - 02:01 PM

bold

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: van lingle
Date: 09 Oct 12 - 02:17 PM

Moonstone

---

There was a line break/carriage return in the middle of your link, so it didn't work. I fixed it. -Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 09 Oct 12 - 06:25 PM

An alternate method for specifying colors is to use a "6-digit" Hex number for the color you want. The first two Hex numbers give the "amount of red." The next two give the amount of green. The last two give the amount of blue.

While theoretically this allow you to specify any color in the RGB spectrum, exact display on your monitor or in print may not be something that is assured.

<font color=#FF0000;>This is pure red</font> = This is pure red

<font color=#00FF00;>This is pure green</font> = This is pure green

<font color=#0000FF;>This is pure blue</font> = This is pure blue

<font color=#883888;>What color is this?</font> = What color is this?

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Artful Codger
Date: 09 Oct 12 - 10:01 PM

Well, for guy stuff, it's "putty", for girl stuff it's "taupe", and if it's on your car, it's "birdshit".

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 03:47 AM

A C - I guess I'd take any of your color names. Actually on my screen my first guess was "camo" or maybe "OD."

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: van lingle
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 09:55 AM

Thanks Joe.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: van lingle
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 10:10 AM

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: van lingle
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 10:13 AM

Traugott

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: van lingle
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 10:24 AM

Traugott

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: van lingle
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 11:44 AM

Traugott

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 12:43 PM

Does Mudcat and my browser support the Unicode "pile of poo" character?

decimal: 💩
hex: 💩

Pile of Poo

Not yet, it seems.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 03:43 PM

Jack - I see your poo poo okay. The browser shouldn't affect what you see, but the encoding your browser is set to use may not be the one needed for special characters. Your own computer also must have a character set (font) installed and accessible in order for them to show.

IE allows you to choose "auto select" for encoding (on the View menu) and it generally picks "Western European ISO" for me and it does poo poo.

Recent Windows versions will include at least a couple of "Unicode" fonts, one of which is Lucida Sans Unicode, and I think there are a couple of others. The Times New Roman that I have is a "Unicode extended" font, but I'm not sure whether it came with Windows or was "acquired elsewhere." NONE OF THESE will include all Unicode characters, but they do include lots of characters that aren't in "normal" fonts. (The two listed at the link are apparently both Apple fonts and I don't have either of them on my machine.)

Before Win98SE, Windows loaded all the installed fonts at bootup, and loading even one of the "Unicode extended" fonts would pretty much fill all the RAM you had. Recollection is that Win98SE loaded only "the first thousand" or something of the sort. Later versions (I'm not too sure about WinXP or Vista(?)), load only a "basic set" at startup, and can "call up" other fonts, or selections from them, "as needed," so you can put all your fonts in the Font folder and Windows "finds anything you've got," but only loads what gets asked for into RAM/Temp memory.

Changing the "encoding" in your browser might display this one, but using it for general web postings is a little dangerous since many computers people will use don't handle many characters over 4 "hex digits" long, and this is a 5-digit character.

&#x1F4A9; = 💩 shows for me in Win7/IE10.

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 Dec 13 - 06:49 PM

Suggested thread for HTML Questions and Practice?

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Dec 13 - 07:08 PM

ă
&@257;
caret and macron

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Dec 13 - 07:11 PM

Gee!
ā

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Dec 13 - 08:31 PM

A helper program for the most common, useful symbols and accents

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jan 14 - 12:50 PM

(bah)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 03 Jan 14 - 01:46 PM

Never use the software mentioned by Bill for Mudcat, as amply explained in many threads including this one and this one. You risk being whipped by AC!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,ketchdana
Date: 03 Jan 14 - 02:25 PM

Let's see if we can add a pop-up comment, or "tool tip".  [Hover mouse here]   YMMV
Not terribly useful, just interesting (if it works).

Bob

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 03 Jan 14 - 03:04 PM

Recent Microsoft OS (Windows) installations allow you to select any one of approximately 128 different "regionalized" keyboards1 so that you can type in about any language you're likely to want to use. Changing the keyboard to something other than the hardware you have of course doesn't change the labels on the keys.

¹ To see the keyboards at the link you'll need to allow popups, since the keyboard "picture" appears as a popup. You also have to click the "Shift" key to see the shifted chars. You can "snatch the picture" using Alt-PrtScn and paste it somewhere, but no one has found a way to get them other than one at a time.

While recent Windows includes two "extended fonts" called "Lucida Sans Unicode" and "Arial Unicode MS" that include quite a few characters not in common "Western" fonts (about 1,700 chars total), they're not even close to including a complete Unicode character set, although they're sufficiently huge that loading them may cripple some computers. (Use only when necessary.) On most HTML websites, using the extended sets will result in lots of "unreadables," so those should be used only if you need them to typeset your thesis for paper printing.

Even the plain vanilla "Times New Roman" in my Win7 installation includes about 840 characters, which is sufficient for most uses.

In Start|All Programs|Accessories ALL WINDOWS VERSIONS at least since Win95 (I'm not sure about Win 2.0 or 3.1?) should include the "Character Map" that display any font you have installed, displays the characters as they'll print in that font, and gives you the Unicode HEX number for the character, or in a few cases the ANSI number for ones you can enter with Alt-NumPad.

(Of course Bill has a minimum of nine programs to do each little trick, but I don't consider them very necessary when Word does nearly all of them.)

Note that using a font that includes "more characters" is senseless in HTM since you cannot control what fonts anyone readiing (or trying to read) your post will have on their computer.

"It is exceedingly rude, and useless to attempt to specify a font when posting to an HTML website." (Adobe PostScript Bible for Win95, ca. 1997)

John

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stanron
Date: 07 Jan 20 - 06:38 AM

    /\/^^^^\/\
   <          >
  <            >
      ^    ^
     [0]  [0]   
  (     OO     )
     \______/
      \_UU_/
  

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stanron
Date: 07 Jan 20 - 06:40 AM

That was using the pre tag in the < > brackets.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 05 Nov 20 - 11:29 AM

Seeing that Ukranian spam this morning, which appeared mainly as ???? I wondered what the current situation was with non-Roman letters.

The upper lines are normal typed or copied letters, the lower lines are encoded into html &-codes. In preview they are the same.

Turkish: ç s g ö ü i
ç ş ğ ö ü ı (the dreaded dotless i)

Ali Babanin bir çiftligi var
Çiftliginde kuzulari var
Mee, mee diye bagirir
Çiftliginde Ali Babanin

Ali Babanın bir çiftliği var
Çiftliğinde kuzuları var
Mee, mee diye bağırır
Çiftliğinde Ali Babanın


Hungarian: long umlauts o u
ő ű

Megy a gozös, megy a gozös Kanizsára.
Kanizsai, kanizsai állomásra.
Elöl ül a masiniszta,
Hátul meg a krumplifeju palacsinta.

Megy a gőzös, megy a gőzös Kanizsára.
Kanizsai, kanizsai állomásra.
Elöl ül a masiniszta,
Hátul meg a krumplifejű palacsinta.


Polish:
c n ó s z l z a e
ć ń ó ś ź ł ż ą ę

Patrzy Wojtus, patrzy, duma,
Zaszly lza oczeta.
Czemus mnie tak oklamala?
Wojtus zapamieta.

Patrzy Wojtuś, patrzy, duma,
Zaszły łzą oczęta.
Czemuś mnie tak okłamała?
Wojtuś zapamięta.

Greek
?de?f? ????ße

Αδελφέ Ιάκωβε

Cyrillic
???? ????! ??

Брат Иван! Эй

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 05 Nov 20 - 12:43 PM

The "current situation" is worse than before the change made about a year ago. The web site is all in UTF-8, but the database remains in some ancient codepage. The script performs a mapping on the (Unicode) input, but, alas, not to HTML escapes (which would be finde), but to characters of the said codepage that the programmer deems "close enough".

The "Preview" no longer makes good for its name - what a shame!

All this has been discussed endlessly, and in the end the worst possible solution was chosen. Some Western languages turn out OK, most others miss out, and many posters are deceived by the "Preview".

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 05 Nov 20 - 01:15 PM

The mostly-Roman languages look superficially the same, dropping some diacritics, which will certainly change the pronunciation in Turkish and probably the others too. I expect speakers of Polish etc. are used to it.

The Greek surprised me. I didn't expect it to convert δ to d yet not use A for capital alpha.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 05 Nov 20 - 01:52 PM

And the ß for β is definitely a bad joke. Who wrote the mapping? If someone in charge reads this: at least fix the Preview, please!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 05 Nov 20 - 03:06 PM

One reason I was testing this is that I'd had to rewrite the encoder in my Browser Tools addon. I wondered it was worth doing, because I thought the problems of a year or two back were over, as I wrote here.

So the site seems to be OK for French, German, and most western European languages. But encoding is still worthwhile for posting lyrics in these part-Roman languages. And obviously for Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, etc - should anybody do that.

The recent earthquake was near Kuşadası in Turkey, a town I know well. It wouldn't sound the same as Kusadasi

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Nov 20 - 06:56 PM

Means "bird island". I was once on a plane going there that was mostly British oackage tourists going to "Koose-a-DAR-sey". Yuck.

Let's try something more ambitious.

???????

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Nov 20 - 07:00 PM

That was Chinese for "Trump is an idiot".

Didn't work.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 06 Nov 20 - 06:14 AM

That was censorship; they try to steal the election!

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 06 Nov 20 - 06:36 AM

Latin-1 supplement
u+00A0 to u+00FF

 ¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬­­ ®¯
°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿
ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏ
ÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞß
àáâãäåæçèéêëìíîï
ðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ

(I added a space at AD)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 11 Mar 21 - 12:00 PM

From a recent thread:
the game’s 80th “anniversary” celebration

Eastern European characters:
    s g i o c n s z l z a e

Musical symbols:
? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 11 Mar 21 - 12:06 PM

Those were actually
    ş ğ ı ő ć ń ś ź ł ż ą ę
and
    ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♭ ♮ ♯

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Reinhard
Date: 11 Mar 21 - 02:11 PM

You can also use named entities instead of code numbers:

&scedil; &gbreve; &inodot; &otilde; &cacute; &nacute; &sacute; &zacute; &lstrok; &zdot; &aogon; &eogon;

for

ş ğ ı õ ć ń ś ź ł ż ą ę

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Reinhard
Date: 11 Mar 21 - 02:13 PM

Ditto &sung; &flat; &natur; &sharp; for ♪ ♭ ♮ ♯

The other notes have no corresponding entity names.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 11 Mar 21 - 03:16 PM

Reinhard wrote: You can also use named entities instead of code numbers

My addon uses those for some cases.
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=159035#4078599

I noticed that Dick M pasted some text into the Monopoly thread which contained 'smart quotes' (as MS calls them) and that those were displayed properly. (Though some instances of the same characters on the page were encoded, which is curious.) I wondered if anything had changed, and whether those east European characters and musical symbols would now display OK in which case my addon's encoding would be unneccesary. Answer: no.

The conversion of those letters into near-homoglyphs is interesting. Where does that occur?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 14 Mar 21 - 04:50 AM

Exxx cxxxyyy -tttttt OREH    

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stanron
Date: 30 Dec 22 - 07:12 AM

  
  /12 |............|  
  4/4 |1  2  3  4  |  
  6/8 |1 + a 2 + a |
  
  

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stanron
Date: 30 Dec 22 - 07:17 AM

How come it works here but not in the thread it was aimed at?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 02:47 AM

Well....I had to fix it here, and didn't see it in the other thread.... ;-)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stanron
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 03:31 AM

Thanks Joe.

It was in the 6/8 Hornpipe thread. I managed to get those three lines working with the "pre" tag. Is it possible to force regular spacing any other way?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: MudGuard
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 03:54 AM

Weird Cloud over Munich, Bavaria, Germany, Europe, Earth

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 03:59 AM

Hi, Stanron - the <tt>tag works to make monospaced characters</tt> but I'm not sure it works for spaces.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: MudGuard
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 04:00 AM

  <div style="font-family: Courier New, Lucida Console, Monospace; white-space:pre;">
    /12 |............|  
    4/4 |1  2  3  4  |  
    6/8 |1 + a 2 + a |
  </div>
  

will show this:

/12 |............|
4/4 |1 2 3 4 |
6/8 |1 + a 2 + a |

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: MudGuard
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 04:02 AM

interesting. div allows style attribute, tt not (style="white-space:pre;" would handle the spaces ...)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 04:05 AM

MudGuard, I don't understand the <div> tag. Can you explain what I can do with it?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 04:54 AM

With the pre tag:

    /12 |............|  
    4/4 |1  2  3  4  |  
    6/8 |1 + a 2 + a |
  

Using the Monospace button on my Mudcat Browser tools addon:

  /12 |............|  
  4/4 |1  2  3  4  |  
  6/8 |1 + a 2 + a |

That generates <span style="font-family:monospace"> ... </span>

Both are aligned, but different sizes here on mobile for some reason.

Note the important 'Monospace' fallback in Mudguard's code. This device does not have Courrier or Lucida fonts. So it won't look the same as in Windows. Just 'Monospace' is enough.

tt (teletype) is obsolete. Some mobile browsers don't support it, I've read, but I don't know if that's true.

Stanron: you posted [code] to the hornpipe thread.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 05:11 AM

Thanks, Dave and MudGuard. You are way beyond me, and I sure am glad you are here to contribute your expertise. I've learned a lot from the both of you.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: MudGuard
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 05:14 AM

div is like span, an element with no special meaning - while span is "inline" (like a word), div is block (like a paragraph).

The style="font-family: Courier New, Lucida Console, Monospace; white-space:pre;"> has two CSS declarations.

First, the font family (I gave 2 common windows monospace fonts, plus the "generic" fallback monospace which causes browsers to use their default monospace font).

Second, the white-space:pre; which causes the browser to treat whitespace "as is" - it is the default value of the pre element.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stanron
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 05:23 AM

Thanks Joe Dave and Mudguard.

I've got Dave's browser ,tools. lets try

/12 |............|
4/4 |1 2 3 4 |
6/8 |1 + a 2 + a |

I highlighted the three lines and clicked monospace

It didn't work in the preview. What am I doing wrong?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: MudGuard
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 05:52 AM

a monospace font does not change the handling of spaces.

In HTML, usually, multiple spaces are reduced to one space.

The pre element and the text-area element are the only elements which (per default) keep spaces. (unless I forgot elements)

This can be influenced by CSS, here by using a style attribute with "white-space:pre;" in it - as I have demonstrated for the div element.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 06:17 AM

This is formatted using MBT - as was my last post:

  /12 |............|  
  4/4 |1  2  3  4  |  
  6/8 |1 + a 2 + a |

Previews OK.

The middle line has 2 spaces between the numerals. Did yours, Stanron?

The button also replaces spaces with non-breaking spaces, as described in the link to MBT.

Let's see what gets posted.

(It uses span and not div for historical reasons - the buttons were originally all inline styling, and the non-breaking spaces were added later. Though in practice a block is more likely - all the examples I've posted are blocks.)

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stanron
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 06:44 AM

That looks spot on Dave. If the bar lines line up then it is correct.

Yes the second line has two spaces. The top line has none and the bottom line has single spaces.

In the thread some one posted a track where a jig was played over what sounded like 4/4 accompaniment.

This was part of an explanation of why it worked.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stanron
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 07:05 AM

I've tried looking up MBT online. No joy. What is it?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 07:14 AM

Sorry - Mudcat Browser Tools

Mudcat thread about it.

And a plug for my Simple Linkifier - because the Mudcat one is broken:
Simple Linkifier

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Newport Boy
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 07:15 AM

Stanron wrote: I've tried looking up MBT online. No joy. What is it?

That's Dave's Mudcat Browser Tools - well worth having for all sorts of uses.

Phil

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stanron
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 08:04 AM

Thanks. I've actually got MBT installed. How do I use it to display the three lines?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 09:17 AM

I just copied the 3-line block into my post, hightlighted it, and pressed 'Monopspace'. If the bars line up on preview it should line up when posted.

You said it didn't line up on preview before, and it appears to me that line 2 had single spaces. Why that was I can't guess.

Copying and Pasting text doesn't work the same in every operating system and every program that you copy from or to. Sometimes you end up copying formatting as well. In particular there are ordinary (ascii) spaces, and non-breaking (unicode) spaces, as well as html non-breaking spaces: &nbsp; Only ordinary spaces get changed to html non-breaking spaces by the MBT Monospace button. If you copy and paste from mudcat itself you might get unicode non-breaking spaces.

None of that should matter. If the preview looks right it should post correctly. If necessary add or remove non-breaking spaces.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Felipa
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 10:17 AM

Dave Ro

I don't always trust previews, because I've had some experiences of pasting in lyrics in Cyrilllic and in Hebrew (not typing, not using html) in which the text looked right in the preview but was all question marks ??? in the final post.

Therefore, I recently posted here first, rather than at the intended discussion thread. I had the strange experience of copying and posting lyrics in html code from the same source, using the same system, and getting a sample that worked and another that didn't.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Stanron
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 10:18 AM

Thanks Dave. I make these displays in a text editor which appears to be named just 'Text Editor'. Linux Mint, Firefox browser. I copy and paste from the text editor into the Mudcat posting box.

The time it didn't work I probably copied it from an earlier mudcat posting. I'll try it again from scratch

/12|------------|
4/4|1  2  3  4  |
6/8|1 + a 2 + a |


This time it worked. Is nbsc stuff the non breakable space?

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 11:42 AM

Stanron wrote: This time it worked. Is nbsc stuff the non breakable space?

Yes. If you started in a text editor he spaces will be simple ascii spaces and the Monospace font will replace each one with an html non-breaking space - &nbsp; - to preserve the layout.

The pre tag, and the white-space:pre style MudGuard suggested will also preserve the layout. Take your pick. But a single button is easiest, I contend.

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 12:08 PM

Felipa wrote: I had the strange experience of copying and posting lyrics in html code from the same source, using the same system, and getting a sample that worked and another that didn't.

Hi Felipa. Yes, I saw that. I can't easily explain what happened. Are you using my Browser Tools addon?

It should convert Cyrillic
ОЙ, ЯК ЖЕ БУЛО ІЗПРЕЖДИ ВІКА Ой, як же було ізпрежди віка - Ой, дай Бо[г].

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: DaveRo
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 12:28 PM

Or maybe Mudcat can now handle cyrillic without conversion to html &-codes?

??, ?? ?? ???? ???????? ???? ??, ?? ?? ???? ???????? ???? - ??, ??? ??[?]

Subject: RE: HTML Practice Thread
From: Joe Offer
Date: 31 Dec 22 - 12:58 PM

Nope. Not working now, Dave. We're on a virtual machine just now, and probably won't have all the bells and whistles until Max does the full rebuild.