HTML TagWriter 3.7

About this program

HTML TagWriter is (was) an HTML editor that I once wrote for myself to make building my web site easier. It became quite large and versatile, so I released it to the public as a shareWare program. It's based on HyperCard, hence runs in pre-OS X versions of Mac OS. It also runs fine in the Classic environment of OS X, but as Classic is now obsolete, so is this program — even though I still use it myself. You can't run this program on an Intel-based mac unless you use a PowerPC emulator like SheepShaver.
Of course it's not shareWare anymore, you can just download it for free. I may even put the raw HyperCard stack online some day, so you can see how it works.

Below is the original description of the program from the time when it was still shareWare:

In the early days of HTML, webmasters had to write their documents 'by hand', or better: 'by keyboard'. Nowadays a lot of programs to make HTML documents are available. These programs can be divided in two sorts: compact inexpensive programs and expensive programs stuffed with all kinds of gizmos and spoon-fed templates which take up a lot of precious disk space and only make the program more complicated.
As you may have guessed, this program belongs to the first species. To be exact, this Macintosh application takes about 3 MB (everything included) and costed you a mere 15 US$.

Next to the standard features you can expect from a HTML editor, this application offers some special tools which can make your life a lot easier when you need them.
*First of all, you can use the contextual pop-up menus to change the lay-out of a page from downward boring to excitingly flashy, by only using the "ctrl" key and your mouse. These menus let you add, edit or remove tag attributes without typing.
*The new standard for web page lay-out, Cascading Style Sheets, is supported and editing styles is so easy you won't even realize you're editing HTML.
*And there's more: ever tried to include the same header in 20 files and then came to the conclusion that the font doesn't please you, so that you had to start all over? With the embedded files, you can avoid such situations!
*Ever had to replace your old e-mail address in 30 pages of your site? With the Multiple File Search & Replace, you can do this in one step!
*Ever wanted a list of links to the chapters in a web page, that adapts itself automatically to any topics you (re)move, change or add? Or how about a self-sorting list which distributes itself automatically over 3, 4, 10, ... columns?

After you've finished the tutorial, you'll be able to do all this without even typing any HTML tags!

Download

The application is available in 3 formats: Fat binary, 68K or PPC native.
If you are using a PowerMac only, the PPC version is all you need. If you have an older Mac without a PPC processor (like a Quadra) and do not intend to buy a new Mac soon, download the 68K version (it's smaller and uses less memory). If you want to use the program on both Mac types, or you simply don't know what all this is about, just download the "FAT" version, it works on all Macs.
The files are compressed in StuffIt format. Stuffit Expander 5.1 (or newer) is required to unStuff the files (get it at http://www.aladdinsys.com).

Download HTML TagWriter FAT Binary (1144 KBytes)

Download HTML TagWriter PPC Only (827 KBytes)

Download HTML TagWriter 68K Only (707 KBytes)

Registration

This program was distributed as shareWare, but of course you don't need to pay anything for this piece of history anymore. You can still pay (or better: donate) though if you wish, to motivate me to write a new HTML TagWriter :)
The price was only $15 (for the latest version) and registration was permanent (i.e. people never had to re-register). The amount of people who actually registered wasn't impressive, but not bad for a hobby project.

Payments were (and still are) processed by Kagi, which means that you can pay by credit card, cash, check or other common payment methods. You can register online via a secure connection at the Kagi site. In the download, a "Register" application is also included. This program is a piece of history from the early days of the internet. It generates instant data to be sent to Kagi, but everyone will want to use the much simpler web interface today. More info about registering can be found in the documentation.

Features

• Interface with floating palettes (which can be moved, zoomed or locked into two different button bars) and hierarchical pop-up menus
• Insert most HTML 4.0 HTML tags with the single click of a button: text styles, sizes, paragraphs, links, images, tables, lists, forms, dividers, headers...
• Edit tags without typing: just hold down your mouse on a tag while pressing the Control key and you get a contextual pop-up menu with attributes and preset values!
• Apply classic text formatting, or use local, global or linked cascading style sheets with the easy-to-use Style Sheet Editor
• Launch the document you are working on in a browser of your choice, with the click of a button
• Automatic conversion between Macintosh, Windows and UNIX file formats, with full ISO-8859-1 support (+ support for the Euro currency sign)
• "browsing" through your local files: no need to go through the "Open file" dialog!
• Check your document for broken local links or missing local images, or perform an exhaustive local link check through your entire site
• Search for text or replace text in all files of an entire folder (and subfolders if desired), case sensitive or insensitive!
• Choose colors with the standard Apple color picker or from the 16 available color names without having to bother with the hexadecimal codes
• Embed external files, so you can split up large documents or use the same piece of text in a lot of files. These files are updated automatically!
• Convert tab- or comma-delimited lists into tables or generate new tables of any dimension
• Create self-updating tables-of-contents or multi-column tables with the click of a button!
• Import text or a WWW-mail form and convert it to or from HTML-format
• Create and edit Client side imageMaps
• Change document properties like background color, font size... without even searching for the necessary tags
• Use a list of your favourite files, links & e-mail addresses
• Preview images and QuickTime movies from within the application
• ... and much more! (just check out the documentation)

In other words, you only have to type your text, and click the necessary buttons. If you ask me, much more convenient than typing everything in TeachText... :)

This version (probably the last pre-Mac OS X version, see below) offers improved HTML 4.0 compliance, both via new tags and more attributes in the pop-up menus, including accessibility-related tags and attributes. There are also some interface enhancements like extra buttons to access anchors, links and embedded files. To get a detailed list of the new features, click here. To learn how to use the most important features, check out the Tutorial.

Documentation

The stack comes with eight files: elaborate help files, a list with the new features, a tutorial, an introduction to HTML (all in HTML format), a file with HTML tips & syntax, and a troubleshooting FAQ in TeachText format. The HTML files are also available here:

• TagWriter 3.7 Help
• Using HTML TagWriter
• New Features in version 3.7
• Tutorial
• A short intro to HTML
• HTML Tips

System requirements

• A Mac with a 68030 processor at 16 mHz or better (everything from the SE/30 on), PowerMac recommended
• System 7.1 or newer
• A bit of disk space (3 MB will do)
• 2.5 MB of free RAM minimum, 3 MB recommended
• Certain features require QuickTime 2.5 or newer (QT 3 or 4 recommended).

Important: In Mac OS 8 and 8.1, HTML TagWriter may crash while opening files if "Translate 'TEXT' documents" is active in "Mac OS Easy Open". To avoid problems, turn off this option in the Easy Open control panel.
Tip: The "Apple Menu Extension" control panel causes annoying delays in all applications, including HTML TagWriter, if you place an alias to your hard disk or a large folder with frequently edited files in the Apple menu. So unless you really can't live without such aliases, remove them from the menu.

For PPC Mac OS X users: This application runs fine in the Classic environment of Mac OS X, but you can't launch documents in your Mac OS X browser, only in browsers within the Classic environment.

Coming up...

I might release one more update, being version 3.8. This will be the last HyperCard-based version of HTML TagWriter (if not the last version altogether). It will contain bug fixes, a few new features, changes to make it more compliant to HTML standards, and UTF-8 support.
The project will either be continued with version 4.0 as a native Mac OS X or cross-platform application, or be stopped. This depends mainly on the amount of time I'll have, which isn't looking good at all. In order to make this application fully compatible with OS X, it needs to be re-written from absolute zero.
However, if the 4.0 version should ever be released, it will finally eliminate all of the current limitations of the program (like the 30000 byte and single-window limit). It will probably also have more fancy features that are impossible in HyperCard, like syntax coloring.

Together with version 3.8, I'll also release the 'development' stack, so anyone interested can take a look at it. I'm not trying to be pretentious here, but my guess is that this may be the most complex HyperCard stack ever. People who are still working with HC or its derivatives, may learn something from it. I must warn however that due to space restrictions there are virtually no comments and all scripts are very dense. I will release the stack under a kind of GNU license, i.e. you can use parts from it in your own projects at the condition that you share your modified code.

Support

If you have questions concerning this program, download problems, suggestions or bug reports, just mail me.

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