HTML Walker
HTML Walker
Download: htmlWalker.zip (Zipped .D64) (Upd. Jan 2006 News)
Introduction
This program will display the text of a html file with much
of the html formatting intact.
HTML Walker was built on my program Text Walker.
Why this program?
Has the World Wide Web finally reached your vic20? Well,
the main purpose of HTML Walker is not to display existing web
pages on your vic (even though
this is possible), it's a program for you who like to do some
word processing on your Commodore 8 bit computer. Use your
favourite Commodore 8bit text editor to write the text while
using html codes to format the text. Then use HTML Walker
to print it out, or to watch it with formatting on the screen, or
to convert it to plain petasc without the html codes. There are
several benefits with this:
- You don't have to care about how the text looks while writing it.
Focus on the contents instead. HTML Walker will format it for you
later when you print it out.
- The result looks rather nice with the headings and
formatting on a Commodore printer. (Made for the MPS1250)
- You can print on different paper formats without changing the document.
Just change the print settings.
- You can easily export your document with the
formatting intact (after converting it
to ascii). For example - load it into WORD on PC or put it on your
homepage.
- As a bonus, you will learn html!
HTML Walker can use both petascii files as well as ascii (including
all ascii dialects for PC, Unix, Amiga etc.).
(Except for non-English characters).
But it's faster on
petascii (the standard charterset for Commodore's 8 bit computers).
HTML and compability
HTML codes are stated withing "greater and less than" brackets. I can't
write them here as HTML Walker (as well as any web browser) would think
that it's a HTML command. So look at this text in a text editor for examples.
In the rest of this document, I will use "[" and "]" instead, just to
display the codes in plain text.
You must have a [html] code in the beginning of your text file, as well
as a [/html] at the end of the file. This is part of the html standard as
well as it's helping HTML Walker to know where the start and end is. There
is a big benefit from this: HTML Walker can use the file format from most
text editors directly without any conversion. For example Notepad on The
Final Cartridge saves two extra bytes at the beginning of the file and
the rest is pure petascii. As HTML Walker first looks for the [html]
code, then those extra bytes are skipped automatically. So texts written
with most text editors will probably work. Later in this text there is
a list of some editors that I have tested. There is no end of file
checks (to increase the speed), so if you don't have [/html] at the
end, then the program will end with a "string too long" error.
HTML support
Some HTML commands are one single word, for example [br] for a line break.
Others are two commands, one to turn something ON and one to turn
something OFF. Then they follow this pattern: [something] to turn it
on and [/something] to turn it off. For example [h1]Big heading[/h1].
The following html codes are implemented:
- [h1] [/h1] Headings
- [h2] [/h2]
- [h3] [/h3] Same as h2
- [h4] [/h4] Same as h2
- [b] [/b] Bold
- [i] [/i] Italic
- [li] list item
- [br] break
- [p] (new paragraph)
- [hr] horizontal line
- [ul] [/ul] indent/outdent
- tables are displayed, but not great.
- [html] [/html] MUST be used!!!
Extra feautres:
- [esc] For printer escape codes.
- [n] For increased numbers, for example [n][n][n] will display 1. 2. 3.
Useful for chapter numbers or CD tracks etc.
- [n0] Reset the increasing numbers above.
All other html commands are just skipped... But if a html tag is longer than
255 characters, then the execution will stop with a "string too long" error.
Directly Compatible Editors
ZED on C128.
Notepad on The Final CartridgeIII (C64)
Text64 (C64)
WriteNow (Vic20)
All editors that can save petascii or ascii text.
How to use HTML Walker
When you have written your text within the [html] and [/html] marks and
used any of the additional html codes and saved it to disk. Then load and run
HTML Walker. First you will be asked about the filename. All questions after
that has a default value (that's displayed within brackets). So for most
of the questions, you can just hit return.Here are some of the
questions explained:
File type SEQ or PRG (s/p) - This is the type of the actual file on
the disk. When you show the directory of a disk, it says PRG after most
files, but some programs saves text files as SEQ. If you load from tape, then this question is skipped (and the filename is ignored).
Petascii, Ascii or WriteNow (p/a/w) - This is the charterset of the file. If
the file was written on a Commodore 8bit computer, then it's most likely
petascii, so this is the default value. (However, filenames ending with .html or
.htm gets ascii as the default value and names ending with .wn gets WriteNow
as the default value). Select Ascii for files that
comes directly from the web or was written on a PC/Amiga/Unix or
whatever. If you get the whole text in the wrong case, for examle
everything in upper case letters, then you picked the wrong one.
Petascii is faster by the way.
Print Setup - The default values of this part will vary depending
on if you are going to print or if you are going to display the file
on the screen. If you for example have a C64, then the width for the
screen will be 39 by default. If you select to print the text
with a printer, then
you will get futher questions regarding if you want to use NLQ etc...
Swedish characterset and HtmlWalker
The Swedish special characters (ÅÄ and Ö) are shown in petascii and
WriteNow files, provided that your computer has them on the keyboard,
but they are not shown in ascii files. All of the included converter
programs however converts the Swedish characters. So if you for example use them
in a WriteNow html file, they will show in HtmlWalker. If you then convert it
to ascii, then they won't show in HtmlWalker but they will show on your PC.
Files in the package
H-MENU-20 - Automatic menu for the disk (vic-20 only) Vic Menu H20 Special version that autostarts html documents (by loading htmlwalker and inputing the name).
H-WALKER - HtmlWalker; The basic version. Runs on any 8bit Commodore.
H-WALKER-20 - Vic-20 compiled (Requires 8K expansion)
H-WALKER-64 - C64 compiled
H-WALKER-P4 - Plus/4 compiled
HTMLWALKER.HTML - This document
VICMENU.HTML Doc for vic-menu.
WRITENOW.HTML - Instructions for the vic-20 editor: WriteNow
WN2ASCII - Convert a WriteNow text to ascii.
ASCII2WN - Convert an ascii text to WriteNow.
TW12 - TextWalker, program for using the basic editor as your text editor. Instructions included.
TW12EMPTY - TextWalker without the instructions, ready for your own text.
LC2ASCII - Convert Petascii files to ascii
LC2ASCII.HTML - Instructions for lc2ascii.
20SOURCE.BAS - Basic source optimized for Austro compiler Vic20. Won't run interpreted.
Speed
The vic-20 compiled version is the fastest (71 cps on ascii) followed by the c64 (61 cps) and
Plus/4 (46 cps).
News in HTMLWALKER V1.3
(Jan 2006)
HtmlWalker can now read files from tape.
H-Menu (vic-20) is now better on recognizing html files. Filenames truncated by
64HDD (and the menu itself) is now recognized (.html .htm .wn .htm* .ht* .h* .w*) and also
all combinations of mixed case letters (.Html, .HTm etc...)
Compiled versions of HtmlWalker V1.3 added for C64, Plus/4 and of course the VIC-20.
News in HTMLWALKER V1.2
(Dec 2005)
Direct support for WriteNow files (Vic-20 editor).
Filenames ending with .html or .htm sets the deafult characterset to "a"=ascii (but you can of
course change it).
Filenames ending with .wn sets the default characterset to WriteNow.
All other files gets p=petascii as the default characterset. But as said, you can always
change this.
The screen does not get cleared on program start so that you will be able to see
filenames etc on the screen while typing in the filename. The intro message is also
shorter because of this.
ASCII2WN bonus program added (converts from ascii to WriteNow).
H-MENU-20 was added and support for it was added in htmlwalker. This is a special
version of Vic Menu v20.
(Vic-20 only) Works as a menu for the disk (and other disks) to start programs
and to load files into htmlwalker: If you
press return on a filename that ends with .html .htm or .wn then HtmlWalker is loaded
with the selected filename and device number automatically inputed. Htmlwalker is loaded
from the same disk drive unit that you loaded the menu from even if you changed unit with
the menu. If you have expansion ram, then H-WALKER-20 is loaded, else H-WALKER is loaded.
More instructions in html format was added.
The compiled Vic-20 version is 43% faster than before (on ascii) as I now made an extra
version optimized for the compiler.
News in HTMLWALKER V1.1
(Nov 2005)
You can now read files on other devices than 8.
You can save an output file to other devices than 8.
The default values are put by the cursor instead.
Note that there is no change to the c64 compiled version - it's still V1.0! If you want a compiled version, you can easily do it yourself with PETSPEED64. The vic-20 version is updated to V1.1.
The bonus program TextWalker was replaced with the latest version.
LC2ASCII bonus program to convert from petascii to ascii was added.
WN2ASCII bonus program to convert from WriteNow (vic-20) to ascii was added. Now you can easily write html on your vic-20. WriteNow instructions were also added.
Good luck!
Anders Persson
https://www.boray.se
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