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Michalis Kabrianis(mailto:kabrianis@hellug.gr) Αυγ 1999
August is an HTML editor, coded by Johan Bengtsson[1]. As August is under GPL, we (Magaz team that is) decided to modify it in order to use it as an SGML editor.
1. Why?
2. August
3. SGML
4. Modifications
5. Feedback
As everybody (!!!) knows, Magaz is written entirely in SGML, and then converted to HTML with sgml-tools and Panagiotis Vryonis'[2] especially-modified-for-magaz mapping. Although that decision was made to make the creation of Magaz easier, it looks like most of Greek Linux users wishing to submit - contribute an article had a problem coping with SGML. So, we decided to provide an easy way, for SGML authoring. Instead of writing an article, explaining the SGML concepts, we found out that everybody finally learns what SGML is, and the problem is only the editor. So, Johans' perfect HTML editor, named August[3], was used as a base for "our" SGML editor.
3: http://www.lls.se/~johanb/august/
August can be found at http://www.lls.se/~johanb/august/[4]. It is a complete, non-wisiwyg HTML editor, coded in Tcl/Tk version 8.0. It provides buttons for the most common HTML tags, such as bold, italics, preformatted, listing, underline, alignment, font color and size etc. Most advanced tags, such as tables, column/row span, basic structure, form/script elements, are also supported. Of course, link/anchor creation is easy, through (you guessed it) a button-click, while image inserting and, finally, previewing through netscape, is as easy as pushing the right button.
Other features include the standard open, close, save, copy, cut, paste buttons, commenting, special character inserting, template creation, more than one open windows, options' settings, uppercase/lowercase letter transformation.
Some of the features apply to selected text (for example bold text), so pushing that button with no text selected will have no effect at all, while some others, such as new paragraph, have no restrictions of that type. That was expected, as not all the tags are the same. Although, the fact that August works that way, really reveals that Johan knows HTML tags (and Tcl/Tk programming) very well.
4: http://www.lls.se/~johanb/august/
Sgml is a Markup Language. That means nothing to the most of you, but I'll try to explain that. Markup languages, add special tags to text, so that when that text is parsed through a specific program, the tags get a meaning, relative to the appearance of the text. The most well-known and broadly-used markup language is HTML (which, by the way means Hyper Text Markup Language). Others, not so broadly known, are Math ML and XML. All of these (with the exeption of XML) are actually subsets of SGML. SGML, through a DTD (Definition) file, may be converted (with use of sgml-tools, aka linuxdoc) to html, txt, ps, dvi, tex, info, rtf etc.
If some sgml-tags have no similar tag for the resulting form, they are ignored. So, that's the way SGML works. No, it's not difficult. It's just different (if you already know HTML).
The modifications, where made against August version 0.30. We hope, if we can find more SGML tags, to make an option, so that August may be used either as SGML or HTML editor.
In order to modify the August, somebody would have to know SGML and Tcl/Tk as good as Johan knows HTML and Tcl/Tk respectively. Unfortunately, I'm not the one :-( I only know some of the tags we use in Magaz, and, as I have found no documentation at all regarding SGML, I have to admit that my knowledge won't get any broader. Although, if anybody knows of a SGML tag not used in modified August, and the equivalent to HTML just let us[5] know.
You may see the Toolbar on the figure above. From these, we have:
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\ Nr - Row Meaning Modified
![[IMG]](/kennedy.gemi.dev/archive/cached?url=gemini%3a%2f%2fmagaz.hellug.gr%2f16%2fimg%2ftoolbar.jpg&t=638427230270000000&raw=False){kind=link}
1 First Exit No need
2 First Close file No need
3 First New file No need
4 First Open file No need
5 First Save No need
6 First Save As No need
7 First Cut No need
8 First Copy No need
9 First Paste No need
10 First Bold Yes
11 First Italics Yes
12 First Underline No
13 First Teletype Yes
14 First Preformatted Yes
15 First Paragraph Yes
16 First Linebreak Yes
17 First Comment No
18 First Help No need
1 Second Color No
2 Second Font No
3 Second Image Sort of\...
4 Second Link/anchor Yes/Yes
5 Second Mailto Yes
6 Second Numbered list Yes
7 Second Bullet list Yes
8 Second Definition list Yes
9 Second List item/definition Yes/Yes
10 Second Left align No
11 Second Centered No
12 Second Right align No
13 Second Basic structure Yes
14 Second Table Yes
15 Second Rowspan No
16 Second Columnspan No
17 Second Background color No
18 Second Netscape preview No
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While August as a program is quite stable, modified August for SGML lacks a lot of functionality. All those form elements, tags, and other stuff missing, could be there, if we get your feedback. You may get modified august from Magaz's server[6], try it and then send us your feedback. Together we can make it better.