Using LO Writer to edit HTML

users
#21

Perhaps the two directions are a reflection of the divergent ways that writers now work. Back in the early days of personal computers, all writing was still directed at the printed page. But, with the web and, now e-books, writers must create content that looks proper on *both* paper and computer screen.

Problem is, few writing tools are good at both.

Word processors (and even LaTeX) are still designed primarily for creating documents for paper. When they are used to create HTML content, they load the file with all sorts of complex (and probably unnecessary) code.

MarkDown editors do a decent job of creating clean, simple HTML code for onscreen viewing, but their print output can be iffy, and there are so many MarkDown flavors that a document created by one editor doesn't parse well in another.

What is needed is a simple system where a writer can write and edit his content once, then press something like "F1" for print (PDF) output and "F2" for screen (HTML) output and get excellent and intended results with both. So, far, my own obsessive search has failed to find it.

Virgil

#22

And the way to achieve that, of course, is to move away from the WYSIWYG presentation that software is so fond of and towards an editing screen that shows instead the structure of the document.

Brian Barker

#23

Absolutely, Brian.

Unfortunately, there remain two different approaches to that concept.

For print output, nothing can beat LaTeX with a LyX frontend for easy text input.

For screen output, there's HTML/CSS with MarkDown as the editor frontend.

Each system approaches structure differently with LaTeX having such tags as \section{} and \textit{} and HTML having <h1> and <emph> with or # or *emph* shorthand in MarkDown.

Now, if someone could devise a unified structure shorthand notation for both excellent print and screen output so that a writer could write without having to decide ahead of time where his work will end up, i.e., in print or on screen.

Virgil

#24

Hi Regina

Hi Ian,

try this:
1. menu File > New > HTML Document. Now you should have an HTML-source-icon between ABC-icon and Print-Preview-icon. If it is not there, see below.
2. menu Insert > Document.
3. Click on the HTML-source-icon. You have to save the file, otherwise HTML-source view is not possible.
4. Click the icon again to switch back to Web-Layout.

Thanks VERY much for the above instructions!! *THIS DOES WORK*!!

I would suggest that these steps are put into the Wiki page on HTML and into the Help screen that is under F1 in the program!!

I have now been able to try LO Writer out in this mode and I must say it's not bad at all!! No colour coding and a few other things missing but - as I said - not bad. I think it could be tweaked into something useful!!

Going in the other direction I tried out Komodo but gave that up as it has a VERY annoying default in that it changes things you code the way *it* thinks it should be and I hate this!! I like to lay things out MY WAY and want it to stay that way. So I have been using Bluefish for the past few days and find it also rather good. I notice one responder mentioned he used to use Quanta - I did too and it's a great pity it was dropped. It was the best HTML Editor I ever came across!!

But thanks Regina, and as mentioned try and get your steps into the documentation!!
Also thanks to all who responded to my original question. Very much appreciated!!

Best regards

IanW
Pretoria RSA