VaVKuD SPeLIn / VAVKUD SPELLING
Conversation from Jim
Your pages have a lot of color changes. This is accomplished with the <font> command.
This also introduces "options=". Options allow expanison of the base commands.
Common options include color= width= size= align=
Colors that have names are: black, white, red, green, blue, lime, yellow, fuchsia, aqua,
silver, maroon navy olive, purple, teal, gray. Other colors require specifying with
numbers.
Width options are numbers. Width as quotenumberpercentquote is useful.
Size options are numbers, in the case of fonts, 3 is about normal, 1 is tiny, 24 is giant.
Align allows left, center, right, top, and bottom.
Try all the options with <HR color=red width="50%" size=5 align=center>
and
<font color=cyan size=4 face="courier">any text</font>
The option, face="any font" works with any font on your reader's machine.
And lastly is <PRE> meaning pre-formated text. All that follows
is d i s p l a y e d as written HTML doesn't do anything with it.
This is a very fast way to create a web page -- I use it for drafts.
You can even include some HTML things.
When you are comfortable with the web page, remove the line that
says <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
It will then be picked up by search engines.
Two other meta tags we added complete the job.
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" will be sure your categories are gathered.
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" will make your search page listing readable.
The next trick is to link to your home page from all pages with a full address;
http:// etc. This is because ranking is, in part, determined by the number of pages
linking to a page as a measue of its importance. Don't bother to use the full address
of subordinate pages, they will never reach enough volume to warrent lists. But if
you have some sort of popular reference page, point things to that page, too.
I have given you enough HTML to be comfortable in making changes and so that
you will feel comfortable when new things pop-up or you want to be a little fancier.
Good online learning sites include:
http://www.gwumc.edu/library/tutorials/introhtml/index.html
http://www.htmldog.com/
Thursday Morning. #2
You must have HTML "on" in your email program. In that case most of my messages
must look strange. The line might look better as this:
> I still wish you would close the Golden Rule line with </i> </a>
If still not good, then put closing tags of /i and /a in angles.
I have made the change from normal email to HTML in all the comments web page
http://www.basic-english.org/vavkudJ.html
because command symbols and examples are hard to see in email.
Here is an explaination as part of learning HTML tutorial.
If you look at the source of the Jim notes page you will see where I have
changed the < into < , Less Than. This keeps HTML from seeing the < and "doing"
the command, but rather treats it as just text. There are a lot of special characters
for symbols indicated with a leading ampersan , an abbreviation, and a trailing semicolon.
Useful examples include
& " © Some lists are:
http://publish.tbred.com/specsymb.html - short list
http://www.cwu.edu/~web/special_symbols.html -- most used symbols
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A1086194 - complete, but their "&" is almost unreadable.
Thursday Morning.
Great, removing the target bit makes the program simplier and more conventional,
I was sorta surprised you had put them in in the first place. I took target= out of
my copy and made a duplicate for www.basic-english.org/21/vavkud.html which has them in,
so you can compare.
I added the latest Scriptures line.
I still wish you would close the Golden Rule line with
About dotHTM and dotHTML. Once upon a time Microsoft was limited
to 8-character names, the dot, and a 3-digit suffix, whereas UNIX was used by
most developers who had unlimited names and used 4-digit suffix for .HTML.
Mircrosoft now allows long names, but some of the original software had standardized
on the 3-digit. To the computer, name.htm and name.html are two different programs.
About <P> for paragraphs , which I took out. This puts blank lines between
paragraphs, whereas
single spaces. To avoid confusion, I standardize on
and
when a double space is needed.
All best,
Wednesday evening.
One feature I added was "lists". Lists are indented sections with either
bullets or numbers. They take a <LI> command, List Item, which puts either
a bullet or a number depending on the type of list. List types include:
<UL>Unordered List
<li>apple
<li>banana
</ul>
another type of indent is
<OL>Ordered List
<li>cherry
<li>donut
</ol>
|
Unordered List
- apple
- banana
Ordered List
- cherry
- donut
|
Lists can be nested and HTML keeps tract of sysmbols for you.
Other commands can be used normally within "lists." This includes
the <BR> command instead of <LI> which gives just the indent,
no bullet or number.
Tuesday morning. After a good five hours sleep and a cup of coffee, lets try again.
[work in progress this morning]
> 1. Page shrinks.
Good.
A browser window opens in the size it was in when last logged off, it remembers size:
left-right, up-down and location on your desktop screen as a service to you. The user
just has to push the full size icon in the upper right corner.
This explains why you you had instructions to tell people how to push [ ] and not [x],
which I thought was overkill to tell anyone who has used a browser for a few hours,
and took it out -- I considered it offensive, cluttered the text, and said the author
either is inexerienced or thinks I am dumb such that I don't trust him on other things
either.
There is probably a command to read your users screen setting and change them,
but (a) I don't know it, (b) I am not going to get intrusive on a reader's computer,
(c) if he is smart enough to recognize that I did this, he would not trust my site from
doing harm to his computer in some hacker way - intentionally or by oversight.
(d) I may be all wet on (b) and (c), but (a) is correct.
2 . Your web page was written such that a click to link to another of your pages
opens the page in a new window. You can wind up with the original and a dozen other
windows all open and overlaying each other or minimized but having a name block at
the bottom of your screen. You can bring any one forward by clicking on that name.
These additional screens CANNOT use the back or forward buttons ; the only thing
you can do is bring them forward, on top position of your screen or to close them.
This is not necessarily the way I would have written the links.
Here are your options.
(a) the normal web link replaces the current page with an new page. You can go back
to the previous page(s) with the back arrow in reverse sequence. This is the normal
way that web pages link.
(b) the way yours is written (by word) which opens a new page for each link -- you can get
a dozen open pages until your PC gets overloaded. You CANNOT use the back arrow,
so the condition you describe is not possible, it just appears that way.
(c) a link will open one additional page.
Subsequent links will overlay that one additional page so that the maximum of two
pages. One may be behind the other, click on the icon on the bottom of the page to
bring on or the other on top. Hint, if the additional page is minimized, the next link
will overlay the additional page but be minimized also and the user will think that the
link did not work.
Techniques (b) and (c) is so that the reader never leaves your home page
and does not get himself lost in cyberspace.
I use techniques (a) and sometimes (c) when showing pictures related to
the original page.
The coding that does (b. many pages) is the words target="_blank".
To change to technique (c. two pages)) replace target="-blank" with target="x"
To change to technique (a. max of one screen) delete target="either" altogether..
3. Golden Rule needs after the words ... in various religions. So as to be :
... in various religions.
(a) the rules are that each HTML command must be closed with the command repeated with a slash.
(b) the commands must be opened in closed in pairs in the reverse sequence. In this
case . to do it in this sequence would be wrong.
(c) I changed location of the link in my copy to be more consistent with the page
I am glad you are making changes -- aids learning and gains confidence.
I believe you made the changes with WordPad, not with NotePad. The editor software
made small changes in the program -- it no longer meets standards. MS-word or
FrontPage or other web page editors write bloated, horrible code that makes the
programming of a page 2x, 3x and more larger, hence slower to download which is bad
for a reader on a modem and will more quickly overload a small PC (especially with
technique (b) above. ) Notepad leaves your code alone and must does what your type
-- GOOD! WordPad thinks it is only a little smarter than the writer and makes only a
few changes, but does not meet standards recommendations of the HTML committee
that will become requirements in a few years. WordPad also ran all the lines together
making them hard to read.
I have added the link to Golden to my copy so we can replace your online page when
we get the problems above solved. I used method (a) for you to see the difference.
Ohh, about problem 1. MS-Word may know how to open a reader's browser in full page
mode and arrogant M$ would not have my qualms of messing with the readers settings.
Some day I try to read the horrible M$ code and see if I can find how they do it and
if it is, in fact, intrusive.
Continuing with our HTML lessons.
The original HTML activities were word processing things.
<B> is bold< or dark print. Your program has a <b> near the top and </b> near the bottom
so that the whole page is bold, except the footer. This is a style thing and I left it
your way. This prevents using bold to highlight really important things.
<I> is Italics</i> or slanted print.
<U> is Underline</U>. Careful, it make text look like a link on some browsers and
it makes small print harder to read. Quotes may be better in some cases.
HTML does not acknowledge more than one blank or space -- this is so that code
and wrap around the end of a line; one can use code alignment to aid writing and
debugging code; and other things. Thus you can not use proper English practice of
following a colon with two spaces. Hint : I write colons with a space before and after
the colon to achieve a similar look and better clarity because computer fonts almost
hide the punctuation.
There is a funny code word in your pages, , that addresses this one space rule.
means Non-Blank SPace and acts like a real character but is invisible. Thus you
can get up to three spaces by writing with a blank before and after it.
It appears as one space if it touches the letters before and after;
Two spaces if it touches one letter. You can link them to get larger blank lines,
but there are better ways to do that.
HTML does not care about upper/lower case -- they may be used interchangeably, thus.
<i> and </I> serve the same.
The exceptions to the rule :
<HR> means horizontal rule, it draws a line across the page, and has not need for an ending command.
<BR> means break, go to a new line. To meet the slash-ending rule, the committee has
come up with a new recommendation for the command
as a beginning command
and continues with no ending command. I think this is dumb and I doubt, or at least hope,
it does not become a future requirement.
Well this took less than two hours. If I forgot any topics, we will pick them up later,
I do remember mentioning the <TITLE> command but forget how I got into it.
Ahh, I remember.
<H1> thru <H6> are predefined headers and sub-heads, where <H1> is large, bold print
</H1> and <h6>is small bold print
</H6> This command starts on a new line and makes space on the next line before the next text.
The H# commands allow a logical sequence of order in a page, book-like.
These headers are not to be confused with <HEAD> which you know to mark one
of the two sections of an <HTML> program, the one that tells things to the internet.
(The <BODY> section is where the text the user sees goes.</BODY> )
<TITLE> is required and is one visible thing in the <HEAD> section.
It puts the wording you see on the box on the bottom of your screen that tells
which open window is which. It is also picked up by search engines to display what they
have found. Hint : Put the most description parts of the title first, because the little
block at the bottom of the page is small; and a search engine will truncate, too.</TITLE>
All best,
Jim
Monday 1 am (actually Tuesday)
Something about loosing 3 hours of memo because I closed multiple copies of
the memo in the wrong order, or some such.
Sunday 28Nov04 morn
Hi Jack,
Added new search engine key words and description.
Added absolute links, ie. to: http://vavkud.com/ from this sample on b-e.org
Added the following intro to HTLM for your awareness.
HTML commands are enclosed in < and > symbols
To mark the end of the command, a slash is put before the command word.
To tell the computer this is an HTML program, we lead the
HTML program with the <HTML> and trail it with </HTML>
Not bad so far, right?
A program has two parts, the <HEAD> for information to the system.
</HEAD>
And a <BODY> which contains the stuff the reader sees.
Thus the last lines of an HTML program are:
</BODY> </HTML>
More later, we are taking this slowly.
Link to Vavkud temp on B-E.org
Link to this notes from Jim page
26Nov04 eve
Hi Jack,
Here is a completed, suggested page layout. If totally far afield of your
desires, then you can keep the original. If you want to make tweaks, the new program is
simple enough now that you can do it (I will give guidance the first couple of times)
and in the future by yourself.
However, DO NOT USE M$-WORD or Other Screen Writing Program -- they
will change back to the original, humanly unmaintainable form OR WORSE. You can make
changes by simply using NOTEPAD (or other text [not word] processor).
First, change the name of index.htm to Indexoriginal.htm
Look at the new program -- VIEW , then SOURCE. Copy the early part of the
code to just above Finis into a new file called: INDEX.HTM. (freed by renaming original).
Click on it and see if it works.
I do not have all of your subsidiary pages on my machine or my webpage,
so the links cannot be tested from here.
Once you (we) get the links to working, Ii have a suggestion that will get you
higher in the search engine listings -- using domain names with the file names.
Other than helping you tweak, if you are interested, then I am finished.
And tell you why I did various things -- such as removing some basic browser
instructions (your readers are not that dumb) - and kept others (they are not that smart, either.)
All best,
26Nov04 noon
A short list of key words (as different from list of short keywords).
"Jack" will find a million listings, too many to be useful. I changed that one
to Jack Beauchamp which finds only 278 web pages -- are you Professor Jesse?
You might come up with finer discrimination for spelling (spelling reform?) and the
others.
More:
Search engines typically print the keyword found (above list or others), then
print a few words about the sites they discovered and/or the first words of the page
found. You can specify what the search engine prints -- so make up a few words.
In the draft I have plugged in "Vavkud is a spelling reform of English using..." but
you know what you want the search engine user to see -- if it is too long the search
engine will truncate it, so put the meat up front.
Don't just repeat the title or first line because that is what the search engine will put
if there is extra room. The amount shown differs by search engine companies.
The olive line is where I have stopped. Fixing Microsoft code is sort'a mindless,
I may play with appearance to keep awake. Don't expect too much too soon. If it rains
I play computer, it not, it is not turned on. And next week my computer room returns to
a guest room for a week.
Darn, just found you have your e-mail visible on your web page. That is a no-no !
Spam harvesters grab email addresses to send you spam. (Your problem not mine.) I immediately took down my copy of your page for a half hour 11-11:30 CST to encrypt it. (I had normal search engine search turned of (to not find
your page on my website) whether span harvesters found it or not, I don't know., but I was not taking chances. If they did, there may be an increase in your spam because it was on my pages overnight. However, the spam you
receive from daily harvesting your site -- once you change your pages, will decrease about two months after you start using the encrypted email on your pages.
25Nov04 midnite
Hi Jack,
Certainly. But I am a little confused : your home page is full of links to other pages.
Were the pages written by somebody else, or did you use software that helps create
the link? To make a link is trivial. I will help, but in case I get hit by a bus, a link is
simply <a href="filename.htm">clickme words
You can see the dozens in your home page by clicking on the top line of your browser where it says VIEW, then select SOURCE from the drop down menu. This will
show the programming behind your homepage. In your homepage the
links are mixed in with a lot of font (letter) size and color changes, and bold print,
but the links are findable. And a lot of your links are to pictures of text (not text itself)
in which the file name after the dot is jpg (rather than .htm). The first one on your homepage reads:
<A HREF="/vavkud.jpg">/vavkud.jpg
where the <a href="filename.jpg"> is clearly seen, then it is sort'a hidden by <B> that
says make the text bold (extra dark). Then <font size=2 (small) with COLOR of green> to show as this.
Then the text which a person is supposed to click on, which reads ' /vavkud.jpg '.
Then each instruction is ended with a slash, thus ends the bold section ;
</font> ends the special lettering ; and finally </a> ends the hyperlink.
I suspect your page was written by a software package, because there is a lot of
redundancy whereas a hand programmer would write much simpler code. I would be
happy to redo your page so that the program behind it is smaller and will show up faster to a person with only a slow modem connection. I would also question why all the colors? at
least I cannot detect an obvious logic to them. Because of the colors, your programmer has felt it was necessary to put the links in bold, whereas if normal black
print were used, then the links would automatically stand out in color and the
over half the link code in our example could be eliminated.
Enough techy talk. Just write your page of 'why a person should look seriously at Vavkud' and
(a) if it is a simple page, save it as a text file. what you see is what you get.
or (b), if it is more complicated, that is, with titles, subtitles, italic words, links to other pages, and so forth, then send it to me by email and I will make it show properly as a webpage and will email it back to you.
Oops, you need the capability to upload the page to vavkud.com on the internet --
and if you don't know about something as simple as links (sorry), then you probably don't upload your own pages.
Suggestion, start writing our "Why" page, you need that under any circumstances,
but tell me how you get the changes you make to your web pages put on the internet.
I assume you have them done by somebody. If the relationships are too convoluted
for me to help, (addresses, permissions, passwords, etc.) then tell your programmer
that you have a new page that is already programmed (html coded) and the appropriate hyper link already made in the revised home page and you just need the two pages uploaded (FTP).
The programming will have been done by me, so he shouldn't charge you for a simple upload (we are talking 45 seconds of man-time)
and you don't have to mention that someone (me) coded the pages for you, unless you want. You will not be taking business away from him, because my help is a one time
thing.
If you want me to rewrite your home page, I would suggest that font sizes be dropped
in the main body and let the reader use his default setting. A person with difficult vision may have his default set to large print. By you saying the print has to be small, that reader must pass over your small print page. I have already said that I cannot detect the reason for the color, unless you trying to be happy or if vavkud uses color in its grammar, or something.
As a matter of comparison, your current programming for the title reads like this.
index
V
aVKuD SPeLIn / VAVKUD SPELLING
V
aVKuD stands for: <vowels accented, voiced Konsonants, upper Dot>.
We find in the program code that the programing was written in Word97 and takes 30 lines of code..
I would rewrite the programming to look like this:
Vavkud Spelling
VaVKuD SPeLIn / VAVKUD SPELLING
VaVKuD stands for :
"vowels accented, voiced Konsonants, upper Dot."
Notice how much simpler ( and faster downloading to readers) this code is - 14 lines.
To see the actual revised title, look in http://www.basic-english.org/vavkud.html
I would add key words that you want found by search engines -- this will get your
pages found by more people. Please make a short list. Vavkud, spelling reform, etc.
This list is invisible to the reader, it is specifically for search engines.
I would pick a different color than purple because used links are that color, making
confusion. Olive and navy both look good, any
dark color will do (not blue, that is reserved for links). (the sample title is navy, the bar is
olive, you suggest any dark color to go with medium yellow background (or a new background color).
I would kill most of the color changes, they make the reader wonder why, taking his
attention from your text. Also kill most of the bold highlighting, too much hides the
important stuff.
Enough of my thoughts. except to point out that my code passes standards checking,
and the next 4 lines of the present code exceeds the maximum number of
errors the error checking program can handle !.
Conclusion.
1. Start thinking of what your want to say about "Why read about Vavkud"
2. Tell me how you get your page changes updated to the internet.
3. Tell me if you want your home page changed or just to add the new "Why" link.
4. Send me the "why" page and I will send it back properly coded.
All best,
Jim
Last updated on November 28, 2004.
URL: http://vavkud.com/indexJ.html