On Tue, December 20, 2011 2:23 am, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote: [snipped long-winded exposition on s.m.l. rules]
so in addition to the _header_ tag, you must make an "id", with another bracket-command, which might look like this:
[div id="chapter_7_header"][/div]
You /could/ use another "bracket command", but if you did so you would use the <a>nchor tag which is explicitly designed to be the target of a link, e.g.: <a id="ch07" />
so now the header, with its matching "id" spec, looks like:
[div id="chapter_7_header"][/div] [h2]chapter 7 header[h2]
Every element in HTML has two means of identification: the "class" attribute, and the "id" attribute. The value of the "id" attribute must be unique in the document; it identifies one specific element. The value of the "class" attribute is shared among all elements of a specific type which share common properties. In this case, rather than adding a new element to hold the target identifier you should simply add it to the header element itself, e.g.: <h2 id="ch07">chapter 7 header</h2>
you could leave it just like that. many people do, actually.
but .zml does more -- by default -- to aid in navigation.
every .zml header links _back_ to the table-of-contents, so a person who is at any header can _jump_ to the t.o.c.
to do the same kind of back-link in .html, you'd do this:
[div id="chapter_7_header"][/div] [a href="#table_of_contents"] [h2]chapter 7 header[h2] [/a]
An HTML <a> tag can be used as both the source and the target of a link. To build a back link in HTML, you could do this: <h2 id="ch07"><a href="#toc>chapter 7 header</a></h2> or you could do this: <h2><a id="ch07" href="#toc>chapter 7 header</a></h2>
that's a little more work, but very few .html tools do this, so you'd have to do it manually. but it's still manageable.
but there's more. .zml also generates automatic links to the _previous_ and _next_ chapters, so a person can easily "skim" from one chapter to the next, which comes in handy.
I believe this is inaccurate. So far, I have seen nothing in your explanation of s.m.l. that indicates how this is done in the markup language. I could accept the assertion that "all User Agents which support .zml must implement a mechanism to skim back and forth from and to chapter headings," but that is a function of the User Agent, not the markup language. Indeed, with the ePub 3 specification conformant software is expected to do very much the same thing: parse the table of contents (implemented as a list) and provide a method of navigation to skip from chapter to chapter.
in order to do this in .html, you'd have to do this:
[div id="chapter_7_header"][/div] [a href="#chapter_6_header"]prev[/a] [a href="#chapter_8_header"]next[/a] [a href="#table_of_contents"] [h2]chapter 7 header[h2] [/a]
Close. If you wanted to do this (and I'd just as soon /not/ have this "feature/bug" cluttering up my e-books) you would probably want to do something like this: <div class="navCrumb"> <a href="#ch06">prev</a> | <a href="#toc">up</a> | <a href="#ch08">next</a> </div> <h2 id ="ch07">chapter 7 header</h2> One sees this kind of navigation element a lot out on the web, particularly on long articles or tutorials. I added the surrounding classed <div> element so I could add a style selector: div.navCrumb { display:none } to make them easy to get rid of.
note that this raises the level of complexity quite a bit. the "id" was based on the header itself, so that was easy to generate, because the two are so close to each other. so it would be rather easy to code a reg-ex for the task.
but when each header has to know the id of the header which came before it, and the one which comes after it, we have experienced an increase in the difficulty factor, to the point where the reg-ex is gonna get pretty hairy.
Yeah. It would be easy to write a script to do it, but if your only tool is regex it could be a bit tough. I did manage to write a macro in TextPad that did it...
you will also need some tagging in there to get the links _positioned_ in the exact way that you'll want them, but i won't bother to put in that clutter too right now, as...
Don't bother to do it ever. Positioning of elements is something to be left for style sheets; it shouldn't be part of the HTML.
...i wish to point out that, all of a sudden, our header has gotten _buried_ inside a lot of .html-tag clutter... which makes it difficult if you need to do more editing. (a rule of thumb is you always need to do more editing.)
But when you look at it, there's no mistaking which part is the header, and which is the markup. [snippage]
in the body of the text, where you have the footnote,[1] you will need to do the .html coding to create that link.
[1] at the footnote itself, which might be in the "footnotes" section, you'll need to form an "id" for the link to jump to.
and likewise, it's usually nice to have a _back-link_ too. which means you need to have an "id" in the body-text, and code the back-link in the footnotes section as well.
and, seriously, that's more than you wanna do by hand.
Actually, it's easier than your navigation crumb. At the point in the text where the footnote is marked you put: <a href="#fn01" id="ret01">[1]</a> (you can add <sup> if you want the footnote superscripted) and in the footnote section you put: <a href="#ret01" id="fn01">[1]</a> Most footnotes in text are superscripted, so in fr2html.exe I wrote an automated mechanism to build footnotes from the HTML output so I didn't have to create elements by hand, even as a text construct. [snip]
you will let us know if you find such a tool, won't you? :+)
Somebody will probably mention it. It's too bad you won't be listening.