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

Just posted 'how to do an "A" page' at the "Base" convo then thought you might not know how to do GuideML.

If you want a quick lesson in the basics let me know.

< mate!You've saved my life...or at least Lorelei's.Maybe you can help me with a few other things...
>How do you put accents on things?Anthea has one on my old name(ie. Lou),but I can't figure it out.
>How do you add someone to your friends-list?It's doing my head in.
>Last but not least,how do you up-date your personal space?

If you can help me with these,I'll be eternally grateful.Hell,I'll even put a tribute to you on my page...
"For the Great Ancha Theri(Jedi Knight),without whom none of this wonderful page would be possible...a round of applause please!

Easy answers first:

I haven't worked out how to do accents and things either but I'll have a look in the the GuideML Clinic when I get a chance.

To add someone to your Friends list, go to their Personal Space. In the right hand column, just under their User name you will find "Add to Friends". Click on this and the person is added to your list automatically.

The red bit on the Arras IV page is just use of GuideML codes to create a table and set the colour of the background and text in the table. It is a little more complicated than basic GuideML, so I'll tell you about it when you've mastered the basics.

Updating your Personal Space in GuideML.
Lesson 1 in the next post.

To update your Personal Space in GuideML.

What is GuideML? - Basically it's a programming language that let you do things on H2G2. Like all programming languages it has it little quirks and "must do's" which make it seem more complicated than it really is.

Lesson 1:

Click on "Edit Entry" in the right hand column of your Personal Space. This gives you a page similar to the one you use to post to H2G2.

Under the big white box you have two check circles. "Plain Text" is checked by default. You should check the "GuideML" circle then click the "Change Style" button.

You are now ready to start updating your page.

Type something into the small header box - your name would do for now. you can always change it later.

Most GuideML code words are used in the format :-

**********

where is the opening code word, is the closing code word and ********** represents whatever you want to appear on your page.

(P is used to force a new paragragh - like hitting the return key in a Word Processor. By convention capitals are used for code words but lower case also works. The capitals just make the code words stand out better.)

The first two codes you need are and . These are used at the beginning and end of your page and must enclose everything contained on the page.

Try to get into the habit of typing your opening and closing codewords first then type in the content between them. It helps make sure you don't forget a closing code word.

So the first thing to type in is :-





Then add the codes, so you have :-







All GuideML pages start this way whether it is your Personal Space or a "proper" Guide Entry.

Next you want a short introduction, two or three lines is enough for now. So your entry now looks like this :-




Hi, I'm Lori.......etc




If you want to use two or more paragraphs here it would look like this :-




Hi, I'm Lori.......etc
Blah, blah, blah
Blah, blah, blah




...but it's better to keep the intro short. I'll show you how to add bit to tell other Researchers what you're interested and how to link to other pages in the next lessons.

Leaving blank lines between blocks of code has no effect on the finished piece - it just makes things easier to find.

At this stage, click on "Preview Entry". This lets you see what your entry will look like. If you have made a mistake in the typing it will come up just as you typed it with red notations highlighting the error(s). If this happens check you have all your <'s and >'s and /'s correctly entered, you have spelled the code words correctly and that you have all you closing code words in. It's a good idea to do a preview each time you add or remove a piece, rather than doing all the typing then spend hours searching for the one tiny typing error.

When it comes up OK you can scroll back down to the edit box and click "Update Entry". Your page will be updated then you can return to editing for Lesson 2.

btw, if it's too much of a nuisance going back and forth between the above post and your edit, you can copy the post into a Word document and print it off.

To do that, open a Word document, over this page then flatline it.

Go to the bottom of the post you want to copy, click and hold the left mouse button at the end of the last word then work up to the top of the post until all the text is highlighted.

Release left mouse button and right click at the start of the highlighted text. Left click on "Copy" in the mini menu that comes up.

Then re-open the Word Document and click "Paste" and the post should appear in the Word doc. You can then print it off as normal. I think this should work in any WP package.

If you want help with all the GuideML stuff and everything, check out the GuideML clinic, it's brilliant

Also, there are alt + number shortcuts for accents and symbols. I can't remember them all though...

Cat

Lesson 2

HEADERS & SUBHEADERS

Headers are the Blue bands across the page, with writing in, which to split up your page and help to make it more readable.

Subheaders are used to further split up the contents of your page.

Again, you use and opening and closing code word with your text in between them.

So you might end up with something like this :-




Your introduction

Fings Wot I Likes

Star Wars
Your write up……

Item 2
Your write up……

Item 3
Your write up……

Fings Wot I Don’t Like

Item 1
Your write up……

Item 2
Your write up……

Item 3
Your write up……





LINKS

Links on H2G2 are allowed to any other H2G2 page.

(In some cases you can also link to pages off H2G2 when you are writing for the Edited Guide but they have to be relevant to what you have written and must not link to anything which would contravene the BBC House Rules.)

Format for a link is :-

description of what you’re linking to

Note that the opening code word also contains the modifier directing to the destination page whereas the closing link word does not. This is also the format for other code words which use modifiers.

Note also that the whole “A” number is contained within “” and that there are no spaces between H2G2, =, and the “A” number.

To Link to your Jedi history page, you would have something like this in your paragraph under a Star Wars subheader :-

….blah, blah . You can read My Jedi History here. Blah, blah….

The text “My Jedi History” will appear on the page in orange and will be a clickable link. The page will also appear in the right hand column as a Referenced page.

The link can appear anywhere on the page that you want it to. You just have to work out how to get it there.

You can also link to someone else’s Personal Space. The format is the same as above but you use their “U” number instead of the “A” number and for the description you would use their name.

Have a go at these and see how you get on.

In Lesson 3 I’ll show you how to get different fonts and text colours and sizes, how to centre or left/right justify text.

Thanks!Most of that just went way over my head,but again,I'm just skimming.I'm at the library,so I'll put it all on disk for later and read it properly at home.