line breaks: how to do it

Subject: line breaks: how to do it
From: jb3
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 04:01 AM

When I type in lyrics to a thread, they come out as a paragraph instead of with line breaks the way I typed it in. How do I fix this, please?

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 04:23 AM

Hi, JB - the main thing to remember is this line break code, < BR> - that should be [br], but in angle brackets.

here is a thread that should give you some good pointers.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From:
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 08:31 AM

And Joe you should put a space or a comma after "<" ;)

Murray

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 02:31 PM

OK, Murray, I'll try it < br> So, what's that supposed to do?
The left and right angle brackets are used to mark HTML commands. Generally, I think, if you are entering HTML commands, you wouldn't want a space after the angle bracket - would you????
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 02:34 PM

OK, let's try that again, with a semicolon: <;br>
Oh, OK, what you were trying to do is show me an easy way to display it, eh? When you want the bracket to do its job, do not put a space or comma after it.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From:
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 04:49 PM

Now I'm cunfused

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From: Jon W.
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 05:06 PM

An easy way to see this in Netscape is to use the Page Source selection of the View menu to display the plain text that makes up the HTML that you see in you browser main window. There's probably something similar in MSIE.

Or to explain in different words what Joe said, put left-angle-bracket, then the letters B and R, then right-angle-bracket, where you want a line break. Left and right angle brackets are also known as less-than and greater-than, respectively, and are typed using shift-comma and shift-period on your keyboard.

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From:
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 08:34 PM

Joe, First of all, the HTML parser (the gadget that reads the HTML commands and makes a program with instructions what to do with it) ignores extra spaces. It is up to the program that displays the text to add the spcaces.

Secondly, If you write "<BR>" The parser sees the first "&" and says "OK, that is the name of a symbol." However, it doesn't know where the name ends so it thinks that the symbol you are trying to write is "ltBR" because it knows when it sees the next "&" which tells it you are starting a new symbol name. Some programs would give an error message at this point saying it never heard of such a symbol ast "ltBR", but the default behaviour of HTML parsers is to not try to process erroneous commands, but to just print them literally. If you stop and think about it, that makes sense. The person using the browser wouldn't want your error messages.

Finally, Every command in HTML has a start tag and an end tag. For example "<" is a start tag for formatting commands. Now "&" is the start tag for the name of a symbol. The end tag for the symbol is a comma, but for convenienc, HTML will accept a space. This means you can't have names of symbols with a space in them, but we all live with that anyway. So when HTML reads "< " it reads start a symbol that symbol is "lt" the space tells me where to end. Then it gobbles up the space and continues its reproducing of text.

Let me know if you want more

Murray

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From:
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 09:05 PM

I should have taken Jon's advice and looked at what I wrote in a browser before posting.

The line that starts with "Secondly" should read.

Secondly, If you write "<BR&gt"...

My memory is going!! It is a colon not a comma that ends the name of a command.

I have noticed that the HTML parser in netscape sometimes doesn't gobble up spaces as it should, so it is a good idea to use the colon to end the name of a symobol instead of a space unless a space occurrs naturally at that point.

The code in the corrected line literally had the sequence:

  quote ampersand lt BR ampersand ampersand colon gt quote  

in it. With no spaces between any of the individual characters.

Had I written

  quote ampersand lt BR ampersand ampersand space gt quote  

That is replaced the colon by a space. Then the result is a space between the second "&" and the "gt" when I read it with netscape. This shouldn't happen as I understand the standard. The result should have been the same in both cases.

Sorry about the first mixup.

Murray

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 09:23 PM

OK, Murray, but now you've gone and got everybody confused, expecially me. Or, maybe what I thought was clear didn't turn out clear in your browser. What people need to know is not how to display angle brackets, but how to end a line.

End lines by using < br>.

Did I do it right? It looks right in MSIE. A line break is [br], but in angle brackets instead of the square ones.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From:
Date: 01 Jun 98 - 09:36 PM

Don't worry folks. The rain will clear up in Sydney and I will go out to play. Meanwhile here is posting number three.

I looked up the standard and I was wrong. I was confusing it with another markup language. (Until about six months ago I was doing a project that involved comparing a number of these languages and now that I have not used them for a while, they are blending in my mind.) Here is the rule, Joe.

If you are writing the name of a symbol you start with the ampersand then the name of that symbol. If the next character is a space, then just type the space. That will delimit the name of the character. If you don't want a space then delimit the name of the character by a semi-colon (not a colon as I said before. That was a typo.) By the way, putting in the semi-colon does no harm even if there is a space to follow, so you can always put it in.

To reverse an old adage: Do as I do, not as I say. You can see the correct code in my last posting.

Murray

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Jun 98 - 05:01 AM

OK, I fired up Netscape and now I understand. Apparently, you display angle brackets in Netscape one way, and another way in MSIE. The ampersands work in MSIE, and not in Netscape. That's why Baz and others got the idea they needed to use the ampersands - I told them to, but in my browser, it looked correct.

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From: Any Mouse
Date: 02 Jun 98 - 11:05 AM

O.K., here is a test for my edification.

Mary had a little lamb
Little Lamb
Little Lamb

etc. and so forth...

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Jun 98 - 03:56 PM

Yup, Mousie, ya done it. I kinda wish people would just use line breaks ( [br], in angle brackets) and not paragraph marks ( [p], in angle brackets) in most situations because the paragraph marks don't always transfer over when you copy from a browser and paste into a word processor when you want to save lyrics posted here.
Whether we like it or not, some people use and like one browser, and others use others. Here at Mudcat, we need to try to figure out what HTML is not uniformly understood, and avoid it. It took me a long time to figure out my ampersands weren't being understood by the Netscape people and so my HTML advice was being misunderstood.
One thing that Netscape understands and MSIE doesn't is the [blink] command. Maybe that's just as well for the MSIE folks. Blinking text can be really annoying, even if it is fun.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: line breaks: how to do it
From:
Date: 03 Jun 98 - 01:38 AM

Joe, what problems does the use of <p> cause? I am one of those guilty of using it. My text browser only allows me about ten lines to type a reply and if my reply is long, I have to type long lines and use markup to get the breaks.

I can switch to <br><br> if that helps.

Murray