A Conversation for The GuideML Clinic

Making up a page with ML

Post 1

Moving On

Help! I have been attempting to revamp my page - the original heading was "on being new", but after reading instructions as to how to get a "Hallo sort of heading, I thought I'd attempt one of those.

I've tried I've tried
and I've tried doing bold and italic type. I now have a page beginning with words to the effect of bad error line and Body guide at the top.
I am seriously contemplating (a) a brick thru the PC (b) running away and hiding because there is now proof positive I do not understand even simple technical stuff AND ITS PUBLIC (you'll have to imagine thats in italics because I'm not going to attempt them at the moment!) and (c) finding someone to fix my printer so I can at least print off your excellent Guide to ML and read it at my leisure over and over again until some of it seeps into my brain.

Any very simple instructions and/or magic wand would be appreciated enormously.


Making up a page with ML

Post 2

Ace Rimmer [pretending]

Do you have a link?


Making up a page with ML

Post 3

Moving On

Managed to get my page back to its original state - no fancy bits atall, just as it was originally but reverting back to plain print, rather than ML. So thats a relief. Probably a very obvious question, but is it ESSENTIAL to type in the <> with the instruction in exactly the right order i.e. ...... or once you've written your screed, and you find you've missed a "/" for example, or done an upper case letter instead of lower case letter - which is my favourite mistake - can you go back and reinsert or change the mistake, or does this banjax the instructions given to the PC?.

As regards doing ones page, where exactly do you start doing the bit - in the header box? Or in the subject box? And while I'm asking painfully beginners questions, why is it so essential to type in a / in the 2nd <> each time, and why oh why is the keyboard designed so that one has to fiddle about with the equivalent of the old typewriter's shift key between these three buttons. Honestly, the number of times I've typed in a questionmark and had to alter this morning alone has made me want to crush a grape. I WILL GET THE HANG OF THIS IF IT KILLS ME

Thanks for your patience


Making up a page with ML

Post 4

Ace Rimmer [pretending]

Yep you need to do it in that order, it's a pain I know but thats how it is.


Making up a page with ML

Post 5

Ace Rimmer [pretending]

The / marks the closing of a tag I think, and you dont put ML tags in the subject line.


Making up a page with ML

Post 6

SEF

Hello Witchone,

Don't panic and figuring out GuideML shouldn't kill you. At least I'm not aware of any fatalities to date. smiley - winkeye

Firstly you shouldn't havet to put in the and tags at all. That should be done automatically when you first decide to make the switch. Just change the options underneath the text entry box in the edit page and press update. If you have already added some tags you'll soon see where they are duplicated. What you want to end up with is:



your stuff in here




The ARTICLE and SUBJECT stuff which you see on testing someone else's page are not anything you should put in.

Assuming your PC has cursor keys (little arrows for up, down etc) then you don't have to put the formatting tags in as you type. You can use the cursor keys to go back and correct something. Tags do need to be in angle brackets and in matched pairs though like:
bold text

or to be self-closing like:
<SMILEY TYPE="winkeye"/>

It is best to use capitals for tags. If you do use lower case ones then the closing one must also be in lower case. Do not use angle brackets at any other time in the text. Use &gt; for > and &lt; for < and there are some other similar codes you'll come across.


Making up a page with ML

Post 7

Moving On

-Thank you for being so prompt. It'll take me a bit of time to read and inwardly digest your answers - I have two computor literate teenagers to show your answers to, and what I haven't taken in by the time they get in from school I can ask them. And if they don't know, perhaps I can get back in touch with you? One last, question pro tem - the tags you refer to - are they <> these things?


Making up a page with ML

Post 8

SEF

Erm, yes depending on what you meant. < and > are just angle brackets or greater than less than symbols. When combined with one of a number of special command words called a "tag name" you get a "tag" and the putting of these in a document to format it is called "text markup".

For example, P is an abbreviation for Paragraph and is one of the official commands. So is the opening tag and is the closing tag and everything in between is in that paragraph.

Sometimes there isn't anything worth putting in between opening and closing tags and it is made self-closing instead. For example, the line break tag.

Many tags allow you to have "attributes" and "values" inside to further define what the tag does. For example:
<SMILEY TYPE="winkeye"/>

SMILEY is the tag name, TYPE is an attribute, winkeye is the value (always in quotes round here) and / tells the computer that there's no need to go looking for a separate closing tag.


Making up a page with ML

Post 9

Moving On

Yes, I meant a tag name. Thank you for being so patient and helping to make it clearer. The older Kevin of the house said he'd borrow a computor text book from the school library for me to go through this weekend ( no point in me going to the local library, I'd get sidetracked) I have lots to learn, but I'll get there.
You may not get fatalities, but I bet theres plenty of crused grapes out there in the ether when beginners like me are learning. Thanks for the advise


Making up a page with ML

Post 10

SEF

That seems to be one of the ways in which h2g2 is regarded as superior to other sites by many people. Round here there are lots of volunteers who have the necessary knowledge (or know where to acquire it) and are willing to help. Most of the rest of the community members are also pretty friendly and helpful in answering questions if you get stuck though.

Have you had a look at the various schemes of h2g2 <./>Volunteers</.> yet? Even if you don't want to sign up for anything yourself, it will give you a better idea of what each group does.

Reading an HTML manual from the library would probably be a good background for you but there are some subtle differences between that and the local version called GuideML. On other computer matters, you probably only need to know how to operate any special keyboard features for editing and things specific to whatever browser you are using (eg Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mosaic, Opera etc). Cut and paste to/from the clipboard is a useful skill to have. It is sometimes a good idea to do your editing off-line in a simple text program such as Notepad and then transfer it into the h2g2 edit box once you are ready. Don't use any flashy word processing packages such as Word because they will put silly characters into the text which won't work on h2g2.


Making up a page with ML

Post 11

Hoovooloo

Witchone:

Go here:

http://www.alledora.co.uk/guidepost/

That should save you a world of pain.

H.


Making up a page with ML

Post 12

Moving On

Who says the age of chivalry is dead? I went "there" signed up to Yahoo and will keep plugging away at understanding this new language. It'll help enormously when (a) my car is back from the mechanics or my friend is back from Birmingham. Who/whichever is back first can get me over to the localPC world who can fix my printer and then I can get all the information you and others have sent into nice safe paper form so I can refer to it as and when I need to. Actually once The Bat is back from B'Ham I have absolutely no doubt she'll take over my PC (and site if I'm not careful) and organise me splendidly. But it'd be much more satisfying if I could get it done for myself.

The next question will be to find out how I can make links like you did (IE, press this reference and the PC takes you to the equivalent of another room (file) ) and likewise on the home page. But lets learn to stand before I can walk before I can stagger and then run...
Thanks for the link - have a good weekend


Making up a page with ML

Post 13

SEF

The BBC computer for h2g2 is specially programmed to turn some things in otherwise plain text into clickable links if it recognises them (usually by the first few letters). Other things can be forced to be links though that isn't always a good idea if they don't go anywhere sensible. You should see a preview button beneath the text box where you type these messages. Pressing that will show you whether or not you are going to get a link. For example: A946721 is one of my h2g2 pages so I didn't have to type anything special at all for it to be recognised as a link. Hoovooloo's text had the right beginning for an external website link so that just worked automatically too.


Making up a page with ML

Post 14

Moving On

SEF - thanks for the explanations, etc, I'm still mulling them over and once the Kevins are back and recovered from their night out, I'll get them to go over it with me.

I think I've learned more this week then I have in the last month!
Well, Ok, I've learned more this week than I did last week anyway.
Thanks again


Making up a page with ML

Post 15

six7s

> Don't use any flashy word processing packages
> such as Word because they will put silly characters
> into the text which won't work on h2g2

If you _really do_ want to use a word processing package ~ to do your spell-checking for instance ~ there is a way to eliminate most (if not all??) of the 'silly characters' (such as << "I'm silly" >> appearing as << &#1234;I&#5678;m silly&#1234; >> or similar)


copy from Word and paste into Notepad
then
copy from Notepad and paste into the h2g2 text box


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