:h1. SpHyDir is not for Everyone
:p.

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.
:p.

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.
:p.

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.
:p.

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.
:p.

This is important because :hp2.SpHyDir is not an HTML
Editor:ehp2.. 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.
:p.

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.