= All About Adding Comments To Web Pages INTRODUCTION On a number of Ella Associates Web pages you may find a couple of boxes at the end of the page which allow you to enter text. You may also see a link at the top of the page saying 'add a comment etc to this document' (As in this page itself, if you are reading the HTML version) This document states how to use those boxes to add a comment or other type of text to the page. Its very basic. This document (if you are reading the HTML version) also contains an example and demonstration of the 'add comment' functionality. To use it just click on the link above. If you want to practice making comments using the comment system, this is a good page to do it on. Also to practice the tricks mentioned below. But it really doesn't matter. HOW TO USE THE ADD COMMENT BOXES This may seem pretty obvious but I will spell it out anyway. Click on the link at the top of the page which says something like 'add a comment etc to this document' or else page down to the very end of the web-page. In the big box which is labelled 'Your Comment' or something similar, type the text which you would like to add to the page. You dont have to type the date, since it will be added automatically In the smaller box, type you name or some signature by which people can recognise you. Click the button which is labelled 'Submit your comment' or something similar. The text you entered will be added to the bottom of the document and will be viewable by anyone else who views the page. Thats it. If you're just itching to try this out, go to the bottom of the page you are reading now (if your reading the HTML version) and knock yourself out. (Its an Australian expression meaning, 'go hard') A FEW INTERESTING TIPS If you are making a long contribution to a document, there are some tricks you can use to make what type into the 'comment box' become nicely formatted when your contribution is viewed in a web-browser. For example: if you type in the comment box a line that is all capital letters, like this... MY BOGUS SECTION HEADING o [actually I cheated by putting a little 'o' at the end of line. Dont do this and dont put any punctuation in the heading either. Thankyou] then that line will be interpreted as a 'section heading' for the document and will be listed in the table of contents like this: MY BOGUS SECTION HEADING (ignore the previous heading, we're still in the 'INTERESTING TIPS' secion) Also: If you are typeing some text which you want to appear exactly as you type it in the final output (in other words the 'end of lines' will be exactly where you put them), then you should surround that text with the -->> and --<< text on lines by themselves. Heres an example. If you type the following into the 'comment box', -->> . -->> this is some very special text . --<< --<< then, when the web-page is generated, it will look like this: -->> this is some very special text --<< (I have cheated by putting a 'dot' at the very beginning of the first lines. dont do this, it will stop the trick from working) But if you didn't surround the text with those funny arrows the text would appear in the generated web-page like this: -->> this is some very special text --<< Approximately, although I'm not really sure exactly how it would appear. Another tip: If you want a url that you type in your comment to be automatically 'hyperlinked' in the resulting HTML page you should type it with an "http://" at the front of the URL, like this -->> http://my.interesting.place/ --<< If you do this then when your comment is added and viewed in a web browser it will look like this http://my.interesting.place/ And the [*] characters at the front of the URL are a hyperlink to that URL (web-page). A quick tip about the tip. Dont put a dot at the end of the URL like this -->> http://this.is.wrong/. --<< because it will confuse my dodgy scripts into thinking that the dot it part of the URL and therefore the hyper-link will not work Thats it for the tips. See ya. COMING SOON A super duper bells and whistles system that will allow for more sofisticated comments and discussions. Thankyou Steven Spielberg for giving me my first break. TECHNICAL NOTES There are two scripts which work in conjunction (but don't have to). These are: 'plaintext2html-forum.sh' which takes a plain text file, such as the present one (if you are viewing the plain text version) and transforms in into a 'marked-up' or 'formatted' html file. Also this script inserts an HTML form in the outputted html page and some links to that form. This form allows the document to be submitted to a cgi script known as 'add-comment' which is at http://ella-associates.org/cgi-bin/add-comment This cgi script inserts the comment written by the user into the text file and then regenerates the HTML page based on that text file again using 'plaintext2html-forum.sh'. The add-comment script then displays the resulting Html. The idea behind this script is to allow the true 'data' source to be a text file. It is envisioned that the text file will be edited by hand as well as through the script. This script was written as a prototype for a more capable and better 'collaboration' system for 'ella associates'. This system would use a more robust web application serving architecture such as JSP or PHP or Java Servelets rather than the rather dodge-brothers approach employed here. The script currently is written as a Bash Shell script which is not fantastic from a security or other point of view. For more detailed instructions as to how the scripts work, please see the documentation headers in the scripts themselves. from within the vim text editor (on the local server) you can generate the 'forum html', that is the type of web-page you are currently viewing (if you are looking at the HTML version), by simply typing ",5" that is comma five. This command generates the required HTML from what ever text file you are currently editing. COMMENTS Added by: [anonymous], on Thursday, 15 May 2003, 09:18 PM more tests Added by: [anonymous], on Thursday, 15 May 2003, 09:15 PM this is appearing Added by: [anonymous], on Thursday, 15 May 2003, 09:14 PM I wonder if the 'result message' will be inserted Added by: [anonymous], on Thursday, 15 May 2003, 09:12 PM I wonder if the 'result message' will be inserted Added by: [anonymous], on Thursday, 15 May 2003, 09:11 PM I wonder if the 'result message' will be inserted Added by: [anonymous], on Thursday, 15 May 2003, 09:06 PM testing the comment script. A comment is being added but not the text. Got rid of 'fromdos' Added by: [anonymous], on Thursday, 15 May 2003, 08:51 PM Added by: [anonymous], on Thursday, 15 May 2003, 11:28 AM Added by: mjb, on Friday, 18 April 2003, 05:54 PM I have thought about adding a 'contribution title' box to the add comment script, but considering that no-one uses this comment facility any way, I probably won't Added by: mjb, on Tuesday, 15 April 2003, 06:00 PM Here I am attempting to add a comment from Netscape 4.61 Perhaps it passes form values in some truly odd and strange way. I dont know Added by: [anonymous], on Saturday, 12 April 2003, 02:57 PM Well, this test script does / appear to / be working \ but what about .. @!@$##$^$#%&$%&*^*()^&() strange characters? thats the question Added by: [anonymous], on Saturday, 12 April 2003, 02:59 PM Its nice to see that weird characters don't kill this script but a comma in the user name will muck up the formatting of the "Added by" line. See the line immediately below this for an example of what happens. Its not too catastrophic Added by: my name, contains, commas, but why?, on Saturday, 12 April 2003, 03:00 PM Here is the comma in username test Added by: the author, on Saturday, 12 April 2003, 03:01 PM This comma in the user name is a problem in the script 'plaintext2html-forum.sh' with the way that that script recognizes comments Added by: m.j.b, on Saturday, 12 April 2003, 03:26 PM It may be interesting to see if anyone does actually use this system. I think there will be considerable resistance to it and this is my argument with nick. Yes it would be nice to have a powerful well designed system with threading and a Mysql database and the ability to make coffee as well. But, from a practical point of view, isn't more realistic to wait to see if people really are going to use something like this before you build some massive and possibly time consuming system. Some people say, built it and they will come but personally in the world of information tech, I dont think that is quite true. The horse may be lead to the water but how do you force it to drink? I do not think it is the role of the programmer to try to dictate to the user how to use a system, or even what sort of system to use. The programmer must provide options and choices and a gentle interface which does not scare the user away. Added by: mjb, on Saturday, 12 April 2003, 04:03 PM I wonder if Navigator 4.61 can deal with the slightly dodge html which 'add-comment' produces. That is, the script puts some body text before the header and hopes that the browser will render it. Added by: m.bishop, on Saturday, 12 April 2003, 04:08 PM The answer to the above question was yes. Netscape 4.61, does render the dodge HTML. The script provides a message to the user telling them if what they tried to add to the document was successsfully added or not. This message actually gets put right after the first tag, so in front of the header and tag. Never the less all the main browsers seem to know what to do with it. I dont know how. For a longer discussion of web-collaboration software, of which this is a fairly limited example, please see http://www.ella-associates.org/alexis-info/resources.html which contains a link to a doc called something like 'web collab software' Added by: mjb, on Saturday, 12 April 2003, 06:02 PM At the moment the script destroys all the 'paragraphs' that a user types. That is, everything is mashed together in one big paragraph. This is a problem with my script. I could try using a todos | fromdos | etc pipeline which might solve the problem