But when I finally managed to get a modem installed, I began to snoop around at all kinds of web pages.  But vary quickly, I decided that these "young whippersnappers" had absolutely no respect for the English Written Language.  Or so I though.  It wasn't until I started to post my own stuff, did I learn the hard way that the rules have changed.

Why have the rules changed?  Who knows.  Blame Microsoft if you like.  But what did happen, was that the technology, for some reason, didn't support the more traditional stile of the written story.  Tabs were replaced by double spaces, line length became irrelevant.  The size of the story is suddenly measured in Kilobytes, rather than in inches, words, or pages.  What is more, is that here in cyber space, one little oversight can turn a work of art, into complete gibberish.

And to make maters even WORSE, no one discuses these problems.  Even the cyber geeks know little of this, since vary few of them are writers.  (Or at least, don't write fiction any way.)

These things have nothing to do with story, plot, characters, tempo, or what have you.  Never the less, technical quality is just as important, if not more so.  And so the following lessons are offered.

1) There are a wide variety of machines out there.  You may be armed with the latest computer, CD-Rom, Mega-meromory-zip, or what ever current cutting edge technology that just happens to be current, but the small one room school in Balie, Zemubo is probably still working with a 386 powered by WIN3.1.  You never know, a militant 3.1 user may even live next door.  Don't forget the Macs and Apples out there, used by most public schools here in the US.  In other words, publishing in the latest DOC. formats will knock off a large majority of the potential readers out there.

2) Most servers don't support any thing more advanced then ordinary text files.  All though efforts have been made with the so called "Rich Text" formats.  But then again, what good is it, if none of the e-mail servers carry it, or if the e-mail reader at the other end doesn’t recognize Rich Text.  At best, all that style and artistic expression take a trip to the bit bucket in the sky.  But what usually happens is all that additional data corrupts the actual message, and it ends up like gibberish.

3) For the typical writer, an artist of words and story, all the bells and whistles are relay unnecessary.  They may even distract the reader from what your actually trying to do.

But if you can't take advantage of the latest, then what is a techno savvy writer to do?  Cheer up.  You still have two standards at your disposal.  Standards that are guarantied to reach any one with a computer.  ASCII (ordinary text), and HTML code.

Essentially, ASCII uses a four digit bit to express one character.  String a bunch of these together, and you have a novel, or even a program for the computer to execute.

A four digit binary number has 255 possibilities,[take a look at the ASCII Character Table] when there are only 32 letters in the alphabet.  Well, ASCII not only has to carry the alphabet, but all punctuation marks you're going to need as well.  But even then, you still have left over space.  Here, they throw in command characters.  The two big ones are character #9 (the tab) and character #13 (carriage return or the enter key).  The tap sets the first line off from the line under it.  Marking the beginning of a new paragraph.  The carriage return ends a line, and starts the first letter of the next word at the beginning of the next line.  There are others as well (the gaps seen in the ASCII Character Table), but these are the ones we are concerned with when it comes to using ASCII to write with.

Here [Example 1] is an example of a MS Works document, when seen by a Text editor.  This is what happens when I tried to save a Works file, as a txt document.  Weighing in at 116Kbites, this file is so corrupted that the whole thing will not display.  Of course, reading it throw Works will give you a whole different picture, and will read just fine, but as a txt file, it's worthless.  You can also get something like this by cut and pasting a WPD file to a non WPD file.

[Example 2] This is all that the above example really contains. This exampel is also an sample of one of the most common erros you may incounter of a txt file posted on the net.  This is becase of something called word rap, witch is a function made by most word processors, and even many text editors.  When the program notices that the line has reached the other end of the window, it automatically injects a carriage return.  So no mater what size the window is, the text will be automatically sized appropriately.

But the net is not one of those programs.  This is something you have to do yourself, and is where character #13 comes in.  Pick a position, then press return.  This will send the rest of the line to the next line.  If you reached the end of a paragraph, press again to double space.  And Walla [Finished TXT file].

Another strategy is the cut-and-past method.  This is where you copy sections from a document, and then past them into a TXT editor.  This works well for short segments.  But if you're going to cut an past a whole document, you could run into problems, but it usually runs smoothly.  Where there are conflicts, the computer will usually flag you with an error.  Even so, word rap is still a problem to remember.

For most cases for posting to the web, word rap is not an important issue.  Most message boards and news gropes already have a word rap function.  It is only when you post a TXT file directly into a web page, dose it become a problem.  There, you have to go in with a TXT editor, and resize each line manual.  But then you are suppose to be proof reading you material any way, so doing this manual is not as bad as it might seem.  A general rule of thumb is to not worry about it until you learn otherwise. (But do check up on your stuff after you posted it.)

I myself use a home made program that checks the line length automatically.  Primly because most material I have seen so far, are not sized.

Something to keep in mind when you write with the net.  Don't forget, your ultimately writing a TXT file.  What is the point of painting with reds and blues if the first thing your going to do is make a black and white  photo-copy the thing.
 

• Do NOT use your options such as fonts color, or even right, center, and justification alignment.
• Use a fixed with font, to give you a better idea what it's going to look like when your finished.
• Look out for special characters, such as ¥§® and ?.  They may not be on the ASCII table.  And if it's not there, you won't see it later.
• Avoid the use of "<" when ever possible.  It throws the more advanced e-mail servers and most message boards for a loop.   (The "<" is used extensively in HTML code.)
• Always check your work using a TXT editor, such as MS-Pad or MS-Word (for larger files).

Frame – use unusual characters to frame words or sentences.  These have also become a standers of sorts to represent alternatives to quotes.
               $Money$   #Ouch#   +Math+

Capital Letters – An old reliable.  Hit the caps lock key (just remember to turn it off when your done)
                DON'T GO IN THERE

Double space – Not used vary often, but can still be vary effective.
                D o n ' t   g o   I n   t h e r e ! !

Unfortunately, HTML doses require a lot more know how.  Manly because there are a lot more commands to understand, when writing HTML.  But also because a HTML documents need to be handled a little differently as well.  Plus, reading raw HTML can be vary aggravating, so they have to be viewed with a HTML viewer as well.  But these viewers are vary common.  Most word processors even allow a file to be saved in HTML format.

HTML's only real draw back, is that for a strait and simple story, ASCII is usually more than sufficient.  Also, a sophisticated HTML document (one with graphics for example) requires any number of files, including the graphics files themselves.  All things considered however, those are rather petty draw backs, considering the raw power HTML has over ASCII.

In case you hadn't noticed due to the lack of spelling errors , I am not Code Name D. I am none other than the illustrious (in my own mind) Jimmu. The same Jimmu who does a sizable chunk of Code Name D's editing, and the same Jimmu who was *ahem* discharged form the U.S. Marine Corps. And yes, I am a certifiable wacko. Due to the fact that I am not Code Name D, this little blurb will not have the trademark humor found in his fanfics and other assorted writings. In the event that you have not read one of his fanfics, and don't know what I mean by trademark humor, than shame on you, stop reading this right now, and go read Akane Wars. My brand of humor is a little different, and does not translate well into print, as it tends to rely more on tone of voice, pauses, self depreciation, and sarcasm (perhaps you have heard of sarcasm......It became popular in New York in the fifties, but never really made it out west). To give you fair warning, I tend to use a lot of parentheses and ellipses ( you know, those funky . . . things) in my writing, in an attempt to replicate my speech patterns. It doesn't work, but don't think that my period key was stuck or anything.

I myself prefer html to straight ASCII text for a few reasons. The first, and by far most influential, reason is the fact that I am a geek. The second reason is that html gives you a little more flexibility in how you present everything. You can present in columns, or whatever format you choose. You can have the text go left to right, right to left, up and down, whatever. Also, html allows you to use bold, italics, and changes in font color, type, and size, to emphasize specific words, or to attempt to replicate tone of voice and inflection. Additionally, the ability to hyperlink pages gives you the ability to break up a large story into segments for quicker downloading, or to give the reader a break here and there. You can also do nifty stuff like a choose your own adventure fanfic (i have see a few of these), or something like that. Also, html lets you add pretty pictures (yay!).

Right now, I can sense you saying "but how, oh wise one, how can we do this? Please, bestow your wisdom upon us" (yeah. . . right). Well, grasshopper, I will tell you.

First off, html is a vast language. It contains many tags, and I really don't feel like covering all of them here. This is intended to be a relatively basic introduction to the language. We will cover fonts, colours, size and other text formatting, as well as a little presentation and the like. You must remember that html is not a programing language, it is a markup language. Hence html, or HyperText Markup Language. This means you cant make a fanfic game, or something like that. If you want to do that, go learn how to program JavaScript, Perl, asp, or whatever (alternately, just drop me a line, and we may be able to work something out). But I digress. First, the ultra ultra basic stuff.

<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

I am sure you can figure this out, but for those of you who still don't get it, lets break it down line by line:

In order to make your background one certain color, you use the bgcolor attribute, like this <body bgcolor="red"> If you want to choose a color, you can use something simple like saying red, blue, green, or whatever else, or you can go the more in depth, geekier (and thus, my preferred method) route, by using the hexadecimal code for the colour you want, like #FF00FF. There are 250 colours you can use
for this, and numerous charts can be found on the web. The remaining attributes you can use in the body tag are: text (the colour of the text, oddly enough) and the link, alink, and vlink which represent, respectively, the colour of a link, the colour of an active link, and the colour of visited links. Easy, right?

</body> Do you really need me to tell you what this does? This ends the body. Your whole page must be contained within these two tags, or bad, bad things will happen. Not really, but whatever you put outside these tags may not be displayed by certain browsers.

And there you have it, the basic web page layout. Now, we will delve into the mysteries of local formatting. Oooo, the suspense.

The image tag looks like this: <img src="irvinekinneas.gif"> there is no end tag for the image, because the image can only be a certain size. Simple right? I thought so.

Now, in order to make sure your images are in the right place, i will touch upon a few attributes. They are align, height, and width. height and width are pretty self explanatory, but here is an example anyway. <img src="zelldincht.jpg" height="500" width="200"> "Wow", I can hear you say, "those sure are big numbers". yes, grasshopper, but there is a reason. The default unit for height and width is pixels. That is actually a medium size image. You will probably have to play around until you get the size just right. A little note, you do not have to include both height and width. You can include just height. Most browsers will automagically adjust to make the image proportional.

Align, however, is a little different. the align attribute tells the browser where the picture should be placed. You only have three choices here. Those choices are center, right, and left. Obviously, <img src="selphietilmitt.gif" align="right"> will place the image on the right of the screen, while <img src="edea.gif" align="center"> will place the image in the center. You can probably guess what left will do.

I
am
a
Final
Fantasy
Otaku

will still be rendered as I am a Final Fantasy Otaku. If you want to put a stop to this, and force the browser to start a new line, you will use the <br> tag. this is a line break tag. So,

I<br>
love<br>
Final<br>
Fantasy<br>
VIII<br>

will be rendered as

I
Love
Final
Fantasy
VIII.

Now that's some weird, wild stuff. The other tag is the <p> tag. this is the paragraph tag. This tag is like having two line breaks in one. That is, it forces a space between two sentences. in order to use it, you put it at the beginning of a sentence, like this:

All eyes on me
<p> is a pretty nifty song

will be rendered as

All eyes on me

is a pretty nifty song.

Spiffy, ain't it? Anyway, you usually put this sentence at the beginning of a paragraph, to separate it from the preceding paragraph. You do not, i repeat DO NOT, need an enclosing </p> tag. Why, you may ask? Because i said so, that's why.

The answer is simple.  A DOC is not a universal document.  A majority of systems is still short of universal access.  Plus a DOC may not even be compatible with all MS word processors.  Word 95 has trouble reading a Word 98 file. Then there is the fact that not every one has MS word.  There are a lot of net surfers out there still using Win 3.1, and then there are MAC users, who are practically aliens from another planet when it comes to MS software.

That said, there are enough of them out there, that you may still stumble on one every now and then.  Usually, they are posted along side a TXT version of the same thing.

Before we get started, I suppose I should cover the two main types of editors. These are WYSIWYG (pronounced Whizzy Wig) editors, and non-WYSIWYG editors (heretofore to be refereed to as text editors).

The true test for a graphical editor, is the creation of nested tables. If you are truly adhering to the w3c html 3.2 standard (shame on you if you haven't! Shame, shame, shame. For more info, click here http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk.wip/). In any event, Many graphical editors have trouble rendering these sort of nested tables with out adding all sorts of unnecessary tags. To take a look at how different types of editors render code, take a gander over here.

After looking at that, you should be able to see the subtle differences. Today's graphical editors are a far cry from the days of yore, when your code could turn out looking something like this:

Notice I did not say word processors. A word processor, like Microsoft word, or Appleworks, is used primarily for writing documents. You do not want one of these. The text editor you want is one that will allow you to save your file in a ASCII format (for more on ASCII format, check out Code Name D's excellent technical standards page).

A text editor is usually a no frills program whose sole function in life is to edit text. They will not have fancy fonts, or nifty colors for your text. What they lack in frills, however, they can make up for in power. A good text editor will have search and replace functions, grep, as well as batch processing of text files.

The most popular text editors are BBedit (or BBEdit Lite) for the Mac, Notepad for the PC, and Emacs or Vi for Unix

Its non free (is that a word?) counterpart is actually more geared towards the Web crowd, with a palette of tools that you can use to define tags, as well as other attributes. You will never have to type < or > again!!! The tools palette comes with a number of the most common tags, built right in. The newest version also comes with direct macperl support, and who doesn't need that?

Additionally, you never have to worry about proprietary tags, messed up syntax, or any of those other funky things you occasionally have to worry about with a WYSIWIG editor. This is because you have complete, utter, total control of the code. I love this. You can make all your code look exactly how you want it, add you own comments, and do whatever you want. Your code can look amazing, concise, even beautiful (you may have noticed I have a thing with clear, beautiful code. This is because I am a geek. My desk may be buried under three feet of crap, but at least my code will look good) However, having clear code does have a practical side. Say you design a site, and three months later, you want to go back and redo something, or change stuff. If your code is concise and easy to read, you will have a much easier time of this.

Now, I will add my little spiel about the various graphical editors out there

BBEdit 5.0.2: Without interfering with text editing, BBEdit offers many productivity enhancements. The colour coding of tags helps you keep track of your code and find things quickly. Multiple undos allow you to experiment. Menus, tool palettes, and dialog boxes streamline the coding of most common tags, and they are even more useful in version 5, since you can now assign keyboard shortcuts to your favorite tags. This way you don't have to memorize character entities such as the code for the yen symbol or the exact syntax of every form element. BBEdit also offers drag-and-drop editing, soft-wrapped text, a WYSIWYG table editor, and numerous other features. One BBEdit feature that really stands out is its powerful search. Not only is it intuitive and easy to use, but you can quickly apply it to a whole mess of files without actually opening any of them. Let's say you need to change the name of a CSS ID from wdgt_menu to wdgtMenu across 100 files. In BBEdit, you merely search for a string of HTML or even a large hunk of code and replace it across as many files as you want, which can mean the difference between a correction that takes a minute or two and hours of wrist- and eye-straining toil. Additionally, BBEdit supports Grep pattern or regular expression matching. This is a more challenging feature, but BBEdit's comprehensive manual has a chapter devoted to it. Also, you can use BBEdit to compare the differences between two versions of a file, line by line.

So there you have it, your guide to HTML editors in a nutshell. Any comments, critiques, nude groupie photographs can be sent to [email protected]. All Flames will be routed to dev/null.

The HTML page (the whole thing now) is like that.  The header, and the closing.  They seem like stuff you don't need.  But this information is read by a whole host of machines.  Not the least of witch is your one HTML reader.  That's where the <html><head><title> come in.  So yes, it has to be there.

 Using Note Pad is actually easy.  When you open a new file, simply open a "*.html" file in place of a "*.txt", and it will read it.  Of course, then it's up to you to interpret the HTML code.  You do this by taking one word at a time, and remember that every thing inside a <> is a command.  You can even read that ugly composer code. (If I can do it, then any one can.)  I usually use Note Pad for the fine tuning.

But with that said.  That isn't as easy as it sounds.  Some basic ground rules have evolved over time about how your story, or web page for that mater, should look like on the computer screen.  There actually fairly simple.

As for fixed, or variable.  There is only one real reason why you would NEED fixed width.  And that is if you're using ASCII art.  Other wise, it's a mater or preference.  The same goes with other fonts as well with the possible exception of cursive, or even hand writing fonts.  Some of these are hard to read, especially at small types.