Web Paging - HTML macros

This page describes some of the m4 macros used for authoring the web pages in this site. The ones listed here are those that will be of most use in the "content" section of the web page, not the macros needed to work the underlying magic. The full macro implementation can be found in htm4 and associated files located at the root of this website.

Macro form
m4 built-in macros
Logical styles
Physical styles
Header types
Separators
Table definitions
Various list specifiers
Special charactor macros

Special web anchor macros
- Quick overview on anchors
- Marking & jumping within this site
- Referencing other URLs & non-web pages
- Some short cuts
Commenting Capability
Miscellaneous macros
HTML page structure macros
Optional Arguments
Slide Making Macros

M4 macros      _TT            _H1            _LI            _MARK                         
images         _BOLD          _H2            _OL            _PAGE                         
symbols        _IT            _H3            _UL            _URL                          
slide howto    _UNDER         _H4            _DIR           _IMAG                         
               _CENTER        _H5            _MENU          _ANONFTP                      
               _SUB           _H6                           _CGIBIN                       
_EM            _SUP                                         _DL                           
_STRONG        _STRIKE        _HR            _BR            _DT            _MK            
_CODE          _BLINK         _P             _NOBR          _DD            _PG            
_SAMP          _BIG           _DIV           _WBR                          _GO            
_KBD           _SMALL         _SPAN                                                       
_VAR                                                        _AMPER                        
_DFN           _BFS           _TABLE                        _NBSP          _QUOTE         
_CITE          _FS            _CAPTION                      _AMP           _COMMENT       
_PRE           _FC            _TR                           _LT            _C             
_ADDRESS       _FE            _TH                           _GT                           
_BLOCKQUOTE                   _TD                                                         
                                                                                          
                                                                                          
START_HTML     _OPT           _UP            _JS                                          
_LINK                         _ROOT                                                       
_REVISION                     _PIX                                                        
_RCSID         _SLIDE         _SYMB                                                       
_KEYWORD       _SPAGE         _UN_NL                                                      
END_HTML       _PRESENTATION

Note that to display the m4 macros here in this web page, the macros were "disabled" by inserting pairs of quotes (`') in the middle of the macro names, thus making them unrecognizable by the m4 preprocessor.

General macro form

The following macros are useful (and easier) implementations of many of the HTML tags. The general format for a HTML tag is

<TAG> enclosed text </TAG>

where the tag is case insensitive. Suppose the tag is "TT" then the enclosed text is displayed with Courier (typewriter) font by the web browser. If for some reason the ending tag is missing (or incorrectly spelled) then all text from that point on will be displayed in Courier font to the end of the web page. Making sure the closing tags are correct and properly placed can be a nuisance. The following macros alleviates this by using the m4 macro definition capabilities to define simple replacements of the form

_TAG(enclosed text)

However, the tag name is quite case sensitive and must be in UPPERCASE. Another advantage of this form is that many text editors (e.g. vi and emacs) have mechanisms for finding the matching parentheses. In vi entering the "%" while placed on a parentheses ("(" or ")") will move the cursor to the matching one. If one does not exist then the terminal will beep at you. I don't know what the emacs equivalent is since I view emacs as a bloated and crippling heresy.

Another form available for most of the text style tags closely matches the HTML tags format with a starting tag and a closing un-tag.

_TAG enclosed text _UNTAG

These may have an advantage when the enclosed text contains commas (,) which plays general havoc with m4 macros unless they're escaped to some level with quotes (@[]@).

Some tags allow optional arguments to be passed as in the following example:

_TAG(ARG=arguments) some more enclosed text _UNTAG

which results in

<TAG ARG=arguments> some more enclosed text </TAG>

For a small class of tags, another way is available to specify the optional arguments. This is for tags where the usual way is to specify "_TAG(some enclosed text)", but due to changes in the HTML standard the tag now allows options, usually for specifying alignment. The new format is to add somewhere within the argument.

_TAG(_OPT(ARG=arguments) some more enclosed text)

_TAG(_OPT(ARG=arguments)) some more enclosed text _UNTAG

m4 Built-in Macros

Some of the m4 built-in macros are common words like "include", "define" and as such may conflict with or confuse the text output. To prevent such occurences, all the m4 built-in macros have been renamed to UPPERCASE with a prepended underscore (_). Hence the two macros listed above become _INCLUDE and _DEFINE respectively.

One macro is treated special and that is the "sinclude" macro that performs a safe include. A regular macro _SINCLUDE is defined as well as "sinclude", which "eats' its argument, outputs no text, and does nothing at all. The purpose of this is to allow the macro specification file to be specified on the commandline as well as included from within for the same results. Hence,

m4 htm4 xxx.htm4 > xxx.html

should produce the same results as

m4 xxx.htm4 > xxx.html

if xxx.htm4 performs an sinclude(html.lite) as its first line.

Logical styles formatting

_EM text _UNEM or _EM(text)

Emphasis (usually italics)
example text

_STRONG text _UNSTRONG or _STRONG(text)

Stronger emphasis (usually bold)
example text

_CODE text _UNCODE or _CODE(text)

Example of typed code (usually Courier TT font)
example text

_SAMP text _UNSAMP or _SAMP(text)

"sample" text, a sequence of literal characters
example text

_KBD text _UNKBD or _KBD(text)

Text designated as "keyboard" input
example text

_VAR text _UNVAR or _VAR(text)

"variable" name
example text

_DFN text _UNDFN or _DFN(text)

The defining instance of a term (often rendered in bold or bold italics)
example text

_CITE text _UNCITE or _CITE(text)

A citation (usually in italics)
example text

_PRE text _UNPRE or _PRE(text)

Preformatted text (usually in courier TT font)

example text

_ADDRESS text _UNADDRESS or _ADDRESS(text)

Address block (usually in italics)

example text

_BLOCKQUOTE text _UNBLOCKQUOTE or _BLOCKQUOTE(text)

Block quote - indents text

example text

styles formatting

Use the Logical styles whenever possible

_TT text _UNTT or _TT(text): Fixed width typewriter font (usually Courier)
example text
_BOLD text _UNBOLD or _BOLD(text): Boldface font (or substitute)
example text
_IT text _UNIT or _IT(text): Italics font
example text
_UNDER text _UNUNDER or _UNDER(text): Underline (may be slanted instead)
example text
_CENTER text _UNCENTER or _CENTER(text): Centers the block of text and images
example centered text
_SUB text _UNSUB or _SUB(text): Puts text in a smaller font and placed below current line
regular text_{subscript text}
_SUP text _UNSUP or _SUP(text): Puts text in a smaller font and placed above current line
regular text^{superscript text}
_STRIKE text _UNSTRIKE or _STRIKE(text): Prints text with a strike-through line
~~example text~~
_BLINK text _UNBLINK or _BLINK(text): Prints annoying blinking text
_BLINK(example text)
_BIG text _UNBIG or _BIG(text): Displays text in BIG font
example BIG text
_SMALL text _UNSMALL or _SMALL(text): Displays text in small font
example small text
_BFS(size): Sets the base-font size, if no argument then defaults to SIZE=3
example text made one size bigger and BIGGER
_FS(size) text _FE or _FS(size,text): Sets the font size
example text made one size bigger and BIGGER
_FC(color) text _FE or _FC(color,text): Sets the font color
patriotic example text
nested example text
_FE: Terminates _FS or _FC, but may need to be nested, one for each unterminated _FS & _FC

Header types

HTML allows for 6 levels of headings and are specified here with _H1 ... _H6. The headers are not indented, but the following text is. This is implemented via CSS for the regular webpages and not the slides.

_H1 text _UNH1 or _H1(text) can include _OPT

Header level 1

example text