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The
Gaffer’s Variety Archive |
Gaffer Variety:
Web Pages V065:
By Willie Gaffer:
Some of you who read these columns may have noticed some inconsistencies in their layout and arrangement recently. In fact, I have been messing around with this website for more than a month. This all began when I realized the webpage program I had been using was no longer adequate. I had been using Adobe Page-Mill, which is so old Adobe does not support it anymore. The lack of support is not a problem for me. Anyone who uses special software knows that the idea of support is a myth. No one supports their software, even when it is a new product.
The real problem is that Page-Mill only supports the very basic HTML language. No extensions are supported at all. For those who do not know, HTML means Hypertext Markup Language. It is a programming language created especially to make webpages. For those who are interested, there are essays with a bit more detail about webpage creation in our “On Writing and Publishing” series. Those are in the Wesoomi archives.
This lack of extension support has become an urgent problem for me. I first noticed it when I was doing the essays for my book, “Math for Moms and Pops.” The problems show up markedly when mathematics, with all it’s special symbols, is involved. I was too busy to do anything but struggle with workarounds at the time. I did manage to get the book essays posted, but I had to do too many things with graphic programs rather than with a good webpage program. As one example, subscripts and superscripts are not supported by Page-Mill. To get those things in my book, I had to do them graphically in Adobe Illustrator, then plug them into the webpage. It was a real pain.
Now, I am about to begin posting study notes in “William’s Corner” and I see the same problem looming. Anything with math, or any other scientific notation, will present a serious problem if I continue to use Page-Mill. Upon consideration, I had decided I would need to purchase a modern webpage generation program. I almost did that, but I noticed Microsoft Word has some webpage capability. The fact is, I recently dropped WordPerfect in favor of Microsoft Word. That was because the page layout program I use for publishing, Adobe InDesign, stopped supporting WordPerfect. I really had no choice.
That is kind of a tragedy, which I can expound on here.
WordPerfect used to be the flagship word processing program for many years.
Microsoft Word was first runner up. That changed when WordPerfect was sold,
then sold again. It ended up with Corel Corporation of
I finally gave up, when Adobe stopped supporting WordPerfect files as input. I had to give the Devil his due. I bought Microsoft Word and learned to use it. There are some differences, but they are not significant. The changeover was rather quick and painless. In fact, I did not buy just Microsoft Word. I bought Microsoft Works, which has a few other nice programs. One I use regularly is Microsoft Streets. It’s a mapping and trip planner program. Another good one is Encarta Encyclopedia. So much for Microsoft hyping. As I said, give the Devil his due.
What I have learned is, Microsoft Word has at least some of the tools and HTML extensions I need to create the kind of webpages I want to create. In effect, I got a bonus I did not expect when I bought Microsoft Works. Here are some examples of what I can do now without invoking other software.
X2
+ Y2 = Z2
25 * 6/53 = X3
As I practice with this stuff, I hope to discover a few
other things I can do with web pages.
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