WebChange for RISC OS

from Soft Rock Software

User Guide

Setting Up/Choices

General overview

WebChange, like many other programs, has the facility to change and store its default settings, so that they are reloaded when you next run the software. In addition to this, you can save additional copies of these settings elsewhere on your system - which means you can save slightly different settings in different locations.

This is useful if you are using the software to to aid the maintenance of more than one website - at the very least, each different site will have its own URL. So you could have a different choices file for each different website you maintain.

There are three choices windows, accessed from the choices submenu, and a number of items in the main window are also saved with the choices.

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The choices submenu

The choices submenu can be accessed from two places - the icon bar menu, and the main window menu. It contains five items, the first three of which open one of the three choices windows, and the fourth and fifth allow choices to be saved either internally or externally.

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The main window choices

The main window

The choices set from the main window are:

• The path/s: You can drag one or more directories (or text/html files) to this window, and what you drag is reflected in the title bar.
  The rest of these instructions will refer to this as your 'site directory', even though it may not necessarily be a directory, and it may not be a single item.
  In practice, while WebChange will happily work with multiple files, in some cases a single directory is more logical - for example, when generating the validation file.
• The five options: Below the 'Replace' and 'With' writable icons are five selectable options, which determine the processes which are carried out when the 'Process' button is clicked - the state of these (selected or not) is saved with the choices.
  These five options are:
  • HTML Tag Case which indicates whether the case (upper or lower) of HTML tags should be checked/changed.
  • Check ALT Text which indicates whether WebChange should check for/insert ALT text in IMG tags.
  • FileIncludes which indicates whether the pseudo SSI file inclusion facility should be run.
  • FileSizes which indicates whether the pseudo SSI file size inclusion facility should be run.
  • FileUpdates which indicates whether the pseudo SSI file datestamp facility should be run.

If you select or deselect any of these options, or drag any files or directories, and close the window, your settings here will be remembered when the window is next opened - however, unless you save the choices from the submenu, these settings will be forgotten when you quit the program.

As you can see from the image above, there are also a number of other icons in the window, such as the two writeable icons for the search and replace text - but as none of these are to do with the software's choices, they will be explained later in this guide.

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General choices

The general choices window

This window is accessed from the choices submenu, by clicking 'General'. It contains the following items:

• Allow wildcards in find and replace operations: If this is selected, the text to be found if you are doing a find and replace can use '*' (asterisk) characters to represent 'anything'.
• Searches are case sensitive: If this is selected, it means upper and lower case characters are treated as different in the search and replace function; that is to say 'This' is different to 'THIS'. If not selected, they are seen as the same.
• HTML Tag Case: If the relevant option in the main window is selected, this indicates the case that all tags will be changed to. Click on the icon to get a menu to change it.
• Leave Parameters: This is directly related to the above option and, if selected, means that when tag case is checked, any parameters (eg ALT or SRC in an IMG tag) aren't.
• Default ALT Text: If the relevant option in the main window is selected, the contents of this icon indicates what will be used as ALT text for any IMG tags which are lacking. It can be set by clicking on the icon to get a menu.
  If either 'Image' or 'Picture' is chosen, then that word is used for the ALT text. However, if you select '<Leafname> then the actual leafname of the image is used.
• Enclose in []: This option relates directly to the above, and if selected, when any ALT text is inserted, it is surrounded by square brackets.
• Set: Clicking on this button causes the changes made in this window to be remembered.
• Reset: Clicking this changes the contents of the window back to the way they were when it was opened (or 'Set' was last clicked).

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Indexing choices

The indexing choices window

This window is accessed from the choices submenu, by clicking 'Indexing'. The choices made in this window control the way the index generation function is handled. It contains the following items:

• Template File: If you drag a HTML file to this window, it is shown in this icon, and is used by the indexing function as a template file; that is to say the generated index is inserted in a copy of this file.
  The file should, somewhere, contain this line:
  <!-- IndexHere -->
  ...which is where the index will be inserted.
• Line Prefix: You should enter in this writable icon whatever you wish to be placed at the start of each line of the index. For example, if the IndexHere line mentioned above falls between <UL> and </UL>, you might wish each line to begin with <LI>
• Tags to Index: These three options indicate what WebChange will use as the basis of any generated index; they tell the program what to find for the purpose:
  - META refers to the META KEYWORDS from the HEAD section of HTML files.
  - Anchor refers to anchor 'name' tags (A NAME=), and
  - Index refers to WebChange's own index tags, which take the form of <!-- Index --> and <!-- /Index --> around the word(s) to be indexed.
• Set and Reset: These are as described for the general choices window, above.

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Validation choices

The validation choices window

This window is accessed from the choices submenu, by clicking 'Validation'. The choices made in this window control the way the validation links generation function is handled. It contains the following items:

• Site URL: You should enter here the address your website would have when uploaded to a web server. If you run a web server from your computer, and intend to perform the validation check while online/before uploading, you should enter whatever address is necessary to access the site.
• Link Prefix: This should essentially contain the address of the validation system and, if necessary, any parameters which need specifying before the address of your pages.
• Link Suffix: This should contain any additional parameters which need to be a part of the validation link after the address of your pages.
• Set and Reset: These are as described for the general choices window, above.

For the 'Bobby' validator, the settings should be:

• Link Prefix: http://bobby.cast.org/bobby?URL=
• Link Suffix: &output=SUMBIT

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Saving choices internally

As explained above, whatever changes you have made in WebChange are remembered only until the program is quit, unless you specifically save them. This is done by clicking on 'Save' on the choices submenu.

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Saving choices externally

The next option on the choices submenu after 'Save' is 'Save as', selecting which opens a save dialogue. Using this you can save choices anywhere on your system, which enables you to have a different setup for different sites.

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Reloading external choices

To reload a choices file, simply drag it onto WebChange's icon bar icon.

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