h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just a couple of thoughts here - and a little bit of duplication I am afraid.

I think that all the pages should link back to the Guide ML front page to make it look like part of an overall document.
I think it would be nice if the page also linked to the next section so people can progress through the Guide ML pages like a tour/document.
I found the reference to PARSER a little confusing. I think you explain it but it could do with being seperated from the rest of the text - perhaps by putting it in brackets.
I think that the complete list of exceptions should be listed. As exceptions the list should be quite small. As things stand I felt it was teasing saying they exist but I am not going to tell you what they are .

Hope this is OK for starters

Hath
x

Thanks for the comments, and don't worry about duplication.

- I'm planning for all the pages to ultimately be interlinked in a similar way to the linking of <./>ACEs</.>, <./>ACEs-What</.> and related pages. However, as not all of the pages have been created at this moment in time, I decided not to put the links in just yet. I have now, however, added a temporary single 'Index page' link to A985935 and A999147. ( SEF, look at the other pages!)

- That's a very good idea, which I may well implement. However, I can't do this just yet - all the pages must first be written.

- Terms such as 'parser', which not everyone will understand, will ultimately be linked to the relevant section of A987122. However, as A987122 is still being written, this hasn't been done yet.

- The complete list of 'exceptions' is all GuideML tags! Any GuideML tag can be self-closed, but it makes far more sense to have a self closing PICTURE tag than a self closing B tag!

again
RhoMuNuQ

Cheers Rho

The sooner the links between sections can go in the better. I have not looked at this project thoroughly enough because it is a nightmare to navigate and SEF seems to be in agreement on this point. I have had a real problem getting around and I am not sure I can be bothered to faff around much more . Please get this in as soon as you can as it is REALLY unfriendly at the moment .

Even if it is after the 21st

Hath
x

"Any GuideML tag can be self-closed" - I'm not so convinced of this since last time I brought it up round here and tested it a bit. While doesn't generate an error it doesn't seem to leave a vertical space either which I thought it should.

This could just be CSS merging the verticle space between elements, you should be checking to make sure whether there is in the output (its not self closing in the output because the output style will be set to html in the tag).

spelugx -- blame the CSS!

OK first paragraph = "Tags contain commands that 'tell' the text how to be formatted - the size, the colour or even the position on the page. Alternatively, graphics or smileys can be created." ...

Unless you are going to approach the whole thing in an OOP manner, I think this should be: "Tags contain commands which say how to format the text, ie the size, the colour or even the position on the page."

Unless you are making an oblique reference to ASCII or TABLE art, the second sentence should say "included" rather than "created". Also you might want to call them pictures or blobs rather than graphics but I'm not sure of the most well-known term.

I wouldn't mention the word command in relation to tags at all, as all tags do is 'tag' text. The whole idea is called mark-up because all is happening is that a text stream is having extra markers added to contain out-of-band data. How this data is used is up to the program containing the SGML parser.

So tags encode information which is later used to format the text in whatever manner is appropiate for the medium (media is plural...).

spelugx

2nd para.: "There are usually two tags - an opening tag and a closing tag. This is so the computer knows which text to apply the formatting to - it couldn't tell if you wanted one word, one sentence or a whole paragraph to be formatted if you only used an opening tag." ... ending with a preposition.

While the hyphen/dash makes sense in the first sentence, the second sentence should be reworded, expanded and split. For example:

"These tags surround the text. This is so the computer knows where to apply the formatting. It couldn't tell whether you wanted one word, one sentence or a whole paragraph to be formatted if you only used an opening tag."

We seem to be competitively simulposting, Spelugx!

I agree with you that adding the word command was a little strange but there were worse things. In that case, COMMAND should probably be TAG in the dummy example.

Can I mention SGML's optimisations at this point?

<B/This text is bold!/
This is italicised</>

These paragraphs are not...
...nested!

Bring back SGML!

spelugx

This is not a simulpost.

...neither is this.

One of my next points was going to be "Italics text" should be "italicised text".

I also think 'self-closing' is a bit of a misnomer since they aren't actually closing themselves, something like 'zero content'. Hang on a sec, let me check xml.dcl for the official SGML term for this...

* imagine a five minute gap *
* you'll need imagination since the gap was only 30 seconds *

Here's the relevant part of /usr/share/sgml/declaration/xml.dcl (from Debian sid):

* FEATURES
** MINIMIZE
*** DATATAG NO
*** OMITTAG NO
*** RANK NO
*** SHORTTAG
**** STARTTAG
***** EMPTY NO
***** UNCLOSED NO
***** NETENABL IMMEDNET
**** ENDTAG
***** EMPTY NO
***** UNCLOSED NO
**** ATTRIB
***** DEFAULT YES
***** OMITNAME NO
***** VALUE NO

(imagine some indentation)

Now I'm not sure exactly which feature it is out of those ones, but it's one of them! Actually turning my brain on shows its not any of them since they're all NO.

spelugx

...and for your next challenge, say that in simple English!

With the example it might be worth emphasising the point with another sentence along the lines of: "So all pairs of tags must be nested and not overlapped." (which also introduces some buzz-words they might meet later but does so within a context which explains them).

My buzz-o-meter failed to go off on those supposed buzzwords. Perhaps you meant techspeak, jargon or English words? (Perhaps we need to explictly mention English as a prerequisite?)

"So all pairs of tags must be nested and not overlapped."

So - nope
all - hope not
pairs - hmm, borderline techspeak?
of - prepositions are buzzwords!?
tags - techspeak but surely not introduced here?
must - nope
be -
nested - English word (ok, I suppose this is borderline techspeak)
and - nope
not - nope
overlapped - English word (bordline techspeak but common to many areas)

no 'buzzwords' as such. Perhaps we should ask microsoft (IBM) for a few?

spelugx

(for a defininitive of jargon and techspeak see the excellent one given in the jargon file: http://www.catb.org/jargon. But please remember this is all UI anyway)

I get the distinct impression you are not on this thread to be helpful, Spelugx.

When am I? Plus it's Rho's article, which lessens my chance to be helpful.

I think I've actually exhausted all my helpfulness in PR, I went through about 80 entries yesterday.

I'm actually attempting to be more pedantic than helpful but YMMV.

HAND, spelugx

Thanks for commenting, everyone!

===

Hathornefer,

Navigating between all the pages isn't easy just now, I know. I would link them together, but, as pages will be added, deleted and renamed, it's easier to link them all together at the end. Any project page is just two clicks away from any page with the 'Index' page link.

===

SEF,

I've tested this just now. parses as and leaves a line break as would be expected.

===

I've made many of the suggested edits. Are there any more comments?


RhoMuNuQ

I gave up because of the (unhelpful) presence of Spelugx (and the absence of Rho).

Please keep going - your comments are very helpful!

RhoMuNuQ