19 Jun 1995 - Preliminary Information

# The SpHyDir Idea

To create a personal home page or an ad layout, one must concentrate on graphic layout. To publish a large body of useful, interrelated information on the Web, it is more important to focus on content and the organization of the entire library. This is the purpose of PC Lube & Tune and so it is the design objective of SpHyDir.

The SpHyDir program icon is configured with the path to a library of Web files. SpHyDir will only edit files and build links to the subdirectories that fall under that starting point (the "HTML Library"). To edit a file, drop its icon into the SpHyDir workarea window.

SpHyDir reads in the HTML and converts it to a sequence of Document Objects. These Objects correspond to paragraphs, images, sections (chapters, topics), numbered lists, bullet lists, tables, and so on. The Objects are arranged in a tree, because the document contains chapters, the chapters contain paragraphs, images, and lists, the lists contain points, and so on.

Most of the objects that SpHyDir creates correspond directly with elements of the HTML language. A few have to be invented and several more have to be guessed. The future HTML standard (3.0) will include Divisions that break the document up into chapters. Current HTML (2.0) doesn't support this, and few Web documents include the HTML 3 features. So SpHyDir has to invent the "Section" object by looking for Header tags that are part of the 2.0 standard. The assumption is that a Header normally starts something. Therefore, everything after a Header (up to the next Header of the same type) must be a Section of the document.

At first the SpHyDir objects may seem a bit awkward. Dividing everything up formally into paragraph objects and list objects is more precise than normal word processing. However, once SpHyDir has decomposed the original HTML into document objects, and those objects have been updated, SpHyDir is now in a position to generate a document with flawless, precise HTML syntax. There are a lot of erroneous documents in the Web. Some documents display correctly on one browser but are wrong on another browser. Few Web authors are HTML experts, and there are many misunderstandings. SpHyDir converts the HTML to something that most people instinctively understand (chapters, paragraphs). In many cases it will upgrade obsolete or "deprecated" HTML elements to current "recommended" use.

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Copyright 1995 PCLT -- SpHyDir Web Document Manager -- H. Gilbert
May be distributed with SpHyDir program

This document generated by SpHyDir, another fine product of PC Lube and Tune.