Producing HTML Documents with Scribe

NSL Technical Note TN-12

Producing HTML Documents with Scribe

Glenn Trewitt

February, 1994

Abstract

Scribe is a document production system that supports the generation of many different types of documents on many different types of output devices. HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the native format for documents in the World Wide Web (WWW). The web is undergoing explosive growth at this time. A major factor limiting this growth is the effort required to produce high-quality HTML documents.

This note describes a Scribe device type and document type that can be used to generate HTML files from a conventional Scribe document, with minimal modification. We assume that the reader has some familiarity with both HTML and Scribe.

The software described here is available by anonymous FTP from the Network Systems Laboratory, nsl.pa.dec.com (Digital internal only), in the /pub/www directory. Outside of Digital, it is available from gatekeeper.dec.com in the /pub/DEC/NSL/www directory.

• Scribe vs. HTML
• Making Scribe produce HTML
• Making A Structured HTML Document
• Imbedded Graphics
• The First Chapter Contents
• Labels, Cross References, and Anchors
• Chapter and Section Buttons
• Character Conversions and Raw HTML
• Headers, Footers, and Addresses
• The <TITLE> Tag
• Postprocessing the .HTML file
• How the Conversion and Structuring Works