Re: Some comments on Amaya 1.3a.

At 06:17 PM 11/9/98 +0100, you wrote:
>> Date:          Mon, 09 Nov 1998 10:46:20 -0500
>> To:            "David J Woolley" <djw@bts.co.uk>
>> From:          Paul Derbyshire <pderbysh@usa.net>
>> Subject:       Re: Some comments on Amaya 1.3a.
>
>> What the devil is that stuff. It's not HTML 3.2, and Frontpage won't
>> generate it, whatever it is. I doubt this works in IE 4.x or Netscape.
>
>It works perfectly in IE4 and Netscape 4.  It is HTML 4 plus CSS1.  

Cascading style sheets? I haven't the foggiest how to use those. I just
want some mathematical markup in my web pages for heaven's sake...

>Since when did Frontpage generate HTML conforming to any standard.

I don't see an option for using this for font changing in Amaya either.
Indeed, if Amaya exhibited such an option and additionally converted <font
face=> to the construct you mentioned in any page loaded, instead of
ignoring the font tag, it would become my editor of choice for this project...

>Amaya is a testbed for 
>HTML 4; if you don't intend to use HTML 4, you probably shouldn't 
>even be considering Amaya - it is not intended as a production 
>browser.

Well, the project got started with Frontpage, but bugs in Frontpage
(notably a serious bug handling very long documents and some page fault
showstoppers with image manipulation) have forced a move to other editors.
Also, more portable HTML would be a plus. The only editor that seems to
nearly fit the bill is Amaya, and all the browsers should be up to speed on
many of the newest HTML 4.0 things soon, where they aren't already. The
only 3 problems with use of Amaya are: 1. How to get it to convert all the
<font> tags into the new stuff; 2. How to get font control editing in Amaya
(a dropdown listing available fonts would be nice, of the variety every
other editor under the sun displays prominently in its toolbar); and 3.
Amaya is slow when the document is fairly sizable.

I'm hoping ver 1.4 will have
* Automatic conversion of obsolete tags on document load.
* Font dropdown in toolbar.
* Smarter rendering of view so as to get decent redraw speed when the   
  document is large, e.g. 180K.
* Better image map support, especially for viewing/editing of
  imagemap areas.

>I just tried this on IE 4.01 and NS 4.05.  It worked on both, 
>although it is a misuse of fonts and should really be done as
>&alpha;&beta;&gamma;&delta;&epsilon;:
>
><html>
><body>
><span style="font-family: Symbol">abcde</span>
></body>
>
>This is a slightly better way of doing it (still a misuse of fonts):
>
><html>
><head>
><style type="text/css">
>strong.greekhack {font-family: Symbol; font-weight: bold;}
></style>
></head><body>
><strong class="greekhack">abcde</strong>
></body>
></html>
>
>It seems that your main problem isn't Amaya at all, but your 
>authoring tools.
>
>-- 
>David Woolley - Office: David Woolley <djw@bts.co.uk>
>BTS             Home: <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
>Wallington      TQ 2887 6421
>England         51  21' 44" N,  00  09' 01" W (WGS 84)
>
-- 
   .*.  "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not
-()  <  circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a
   `*'  straight line."    -------------------------------------------------
        -- B. Mandelbrot  |http://surf.to/pgd.net
_____________________ ____|________     Paul Derbyshire     pderbysh@usa.net
Programmer & Humanist|ICQ: 10423848|

Received on Monday, 9 November 1998 15:50:09 UTC