16 Mar 1995 - Preliminary Information

SpHyDir is not for Everyone

SpHyDir was written after many months of frustration dealing with other Web authoring environments. It will develop to meet the needs of PC Lube and Tune and potentially a large group of other Web authors. It was not written to be a "product" in the usual sense of that word because the environment of the Web is changing too rapidly. When someone talks about HTML, is that Version 1, Version 2, Version 3, or Netscape extensions? It isn't possible to really build a "product" against a target that changes and is vaguely defined.

In many cases, this document will tell you what is legal and what is not. SpHyDir doesn't guarantee to detect all errors at the earliest opportunity. The crosschecks necessary to make sure that every document element is in its proper place are a secondary effort to be added later on. Besides, with the possible exception of HotMetTal, no other Web document tools makes complete validity checks.

The author develops SpHyDir during spare time. Mostly, this means over weekends. The SpHyDir project aims to deliver updates each Monday. When bugs are reported, and assuming that there are no major updates under way, fixes may be posted to the server in midweek. There are no plans to have formal releases, so a version of SpHyDir is typically known by the date on the EXE file after it is unzipped. To know if there is a new version, use FTP to check the date of the ZIP file on the server.

SpHyDir can be dangerous. When it begins to generate HTML from the edited data, it copies the previous file to a backup directory. However, save the file twice and the original data is lost.

This is important because SpHyDir is not an HTML Editor. It reads HTML and proposes a structural representation of the original data. When done, it writes a new file containing its own HTML to reflect this structure and any changes. If the original file used constructs that SpHyDir doesn't support, the resulting file can lose information. Keep the original data. Compare it to the output of SpHyDir before discarding the old files.

SpHyDir is not written tightly enough to trap its own syntax errors and recover. Rexx simply stops the program when it encounters a problem. Since Rexx is an interpreted language, syntax errors may only be detected during execution. When the program aborts, it can leave the output file half-written. This is the primary reason for making a backup of the previous copy of the file before generating a new copy.

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This document generated by SpHyDir another fine product of PC Lube and Tune.