About HTML Editors

Any HTML editor which lets you modify the source by adding brackets ([]) and dollar signs ($) is completely acceptable for WELD. Some editors try to "improve" your source by changing these characters to their HTML "&" equivalents. This editor behavior is not acceptable and the editor may need to be configured to leave these special characters alone. Several other characters such as curly braces ({}), double quotes ("), and the backslash (\) also have some special meaning to WELD, but their use and conflicts with such editors should be rare.

Really, the choice of editors is a personal matter. Although we might want everyone to carry our favorite scent, we wouldn't try to impose our brand of deodorant on everyone, would we? It would be especially dismal if the most popular vendor gained a monopoly and eliminated all of the competition. Then what would we have? Government-issue?

Whether writing for programming, HTML, or spoken language: the reason editors need to be different is that they should be viewed as simply tools to work on the subject documents. The documents themselves should be independent of any particular vendor. When this separation is not the case, we see the opportunity for the dominant vendor to blackmail their customers by requiring the unwilling customer to stay "in the family" in order to continue to use the documents which represent a greater investment than a mere upgrade fee.

Talented workers come from varied backgrounds. It is expensive and provides questionable value to try to synchronize these workers to use a particular tool.

Personal experience has shown that any of the following HTML editors may be used for creation of WELD files, but that they all have little quirks:

MS FrontPage 2000
Claris Home Page
Netscape Composer
Chami HTML Kit
Bluefish

These are just those which I have used... use the tool that fits your hand best, and fight for the right to do so. In short, choose the quirks you like best and avoid being the victim of a vendor. If you must be the victim of a vendor, at least choose the one which you feel comfortable with.

Practice question: at what point does a fish realize that it has been caught?

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About HTML Editors

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Modified: Tue Apr 18 12:20:57 EDT 2000