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Original Usenet message from alt.ascii-art, 31 Aug 1994.
Talk: Should I html'ize the FAQ?

Talk: Should I html'ize the FAQ?

In article <340ai5$9k...@gagme.wwa.com>, Bob Allison <bob...@wwa.com> wrote:
>
>
>   The only problem is that I would probably HTML'ize the FAQ portion (or
>maybe all of the) ASCII Art Resources file.  This file has a lot of ASCII
>art included, some of which is wrapped with text.

>   This type of file needs to be HTML'ized after it is changed.  It would
>be very hard to change it once it has embedded HTML tags.

Why? The HTML file itself can look like shit and be a total mess,
since HTML is a *markup language*. As long as the ASCII stuff
looks okay and is wrapped in <PRE></PRE> the results of the
"lynx -dump" will look fine.

Try it. The nice thing about HTML (and *any* markup language,
like LaTeX) is that the source file doesn't have to be
pretty. For example:

......................................................................
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Example HTML Document</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>

<H1>
This is a sample
of
an
<a href="http://foo.bar.com/~bubba">
ASCII
Art
FAQ</a>
!!!!!</H1>

<dl>
<dt>Line<dd>Using mostly
<code>_-~|/\()&gt;&lt;.,'`"O</code>
to draw things.
<dt>
Greyscale
<dd>
Using things like
<code>.,"-oad*8M$&amp;@#</code> to represent pixels
</dl>

<!-- The above is the index! Really! -->

<hr>

By Joshua Bell, as an example of poor internal layout for an HTML file. This line, for example, is much wider than 80 columns, but it doesn't really matter.
<p>
<address> Joshua Bell
&lt;jsb...@acs.ucalgary.ca&gt; </address>

<BODY>
</HTML>
......................................................................

That, passed through lynx -dump, yields:

......................................................................

                 THIS IS A SAMPLE OF AN ASCII ART FAQ !!!!!

   Line
          Using mostly _-~|/\()><.,'`"O to draw things.

   Greyscale
          Using things like .,"-oad*8M$&@# to represent pixels


     _________________________________________________________________

   By Joshua Bell, as an example of poor internal layout for an HTML
   file. This line, for example, is much wider than 80 columns, but it
   doesn't really matter.

    Joshua Bell <jsb...@acs.ucalgary.ca>
......................................................................

Now usually the HTML file isn't that bad, and if you use
something like Emacs html-helper-mode (see
http://www.reed.edu/~nelson/tools/) it'll help format the HTML
nicely for you. But you don't *have* to keep it looking pretty
inside the HTML file, except for your own convenience. No-one
sees it unless they specifically ask for it, and they should be
expecting a mess.

If you want to add a new paragraph somewhere, just rememeber to
add in the <p> tags in the appropriate places (or <p>...</p> if
you want to be HTML+ compliant).

Maintaining HTML documents is MUCH simpler than maintaining plain
text documents; no worries about formatting! No need to juggle
word wrapping! The drudgery of adding in new hyperlinks is about
the only downer.

Joshua

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From: jsb...@acs.ucalgary.ca (Joshua Bell)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.ascii,alt.ascii-art,alt.binaries.pictures.ascii
Subject: Talk: Should I html'ize the FAQ?
Date: 30 Aug 1994 22:09:20 -0500
Organization: University Computing Services (The University of Calgary)
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