These are the conventions which I follow in devising mark-up symbols for the information files. It isn't my intention to invent a new mark-up language, but I do want to make sure I have enough freedom to construct any facilities I want without falling over other people's restrictions, and also that if anyone wishes to include literal HTML or LaTeX or other text ( perhaps in course specifications ? ) then it will work as expected.
I do not guarantee that I shall invariably stick to these conventions !
| Symbol | Explanation |
| |!|name!| | A symbol which applies to the next line. |
|
|!|name on!| |!|name off!| | Symbols which bracket a number of lines. |
| |!!name!| | A symbol which applies locally within a line - either it means something by itself, or it applies to the next string. . |
|
|!!name on!| |!!name off!| | Symbols which bracket a number of strings within a line. |
Many of the symbols which operate on whole lines or multiples thereof have names which reflect their formats or functions - so |!|Chapter heading!| and the pair which starts with |!|Bulleted list on!| are what they say.
Local character styles are controlled by symbol pairs starting with |!!italic on!| and |!!bold on!| do what you'd expect. ( I did wonder whether to include the HTML symbols <i> ... </i>, etc. I decided against it because to provide only a selection of the HTML symbols would be misleading, and I wasn't about to provide all of them. )
Some symbols are converted into useful characters which might otherwise get lost in mail or elsewhere. These are :
| |!!nbs!| | non-breaking space |
| |!!tabulate!| | a tabulation character |
| |!!break!| | a line break |
( Some of these are fairly complicated, but for the moment they'll have to do. They work, most of the time. Anyone with bright ideas for better syntax is more than welcome to tell me about them. )
You can use a special symbol if you want to include WWW links. It is :
|!!text!URL!The URL to be used!|
In the printed version, this will come out as text ( The URL to be used ), and in the WWW version it will work as you'd expect; text will be visible, and act as a link to the URL. There's a similar code for inserting "mailto" entries :
|!!text!EMAIL!E-mail address!|
It works in the same way. In both cases, if you want the text to be the same as the URL or E-mail address, then use " for the text. This prints as just the URL or address, but appears as an active link in the web version.
To include a picture, follow this pattern :
|!!picture|filename|description!|
That will include the file filename.gif; in the HTML version, the description will be included as the alt component of the img element, so it will be used if the picture cannot be read, and for voice rendering.
So far, you have no control over the formatting of pictures. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. If you want to do this, don't forget to send me the picture.
To refer to a different section of the handbook, follow this pattern :
|!!section|identifier!|
That will be replaced by ( in the text handbooks ) "section m.n" or ( in the HTML version ) an active link to the name of the section. This will always work ( he asserted, bravely ); it happens automatically, so keeps track of possible changes in the handbook structure.
To find the identifier, look at the lists for the undergraduate and graduate handbooks.
Alan Creak,
2000 October.
Go to me;
Go to Information;
Go to Computer Science.