Webmagic overview

This is an overview of the use of the SGI Webmagic HTML editor for X-Windows. These materials were tested at the University of Baltimore, only.

The original on-line reference can be found by selecting WebMagic.

Starting Webmagic

I suggest that you place on your workspace an icon for webmagic, as follows:

click on the Desktop item in the toolbar.
click on find an icon item, and type webmagic in the dialog box.
drag the icon that shows up at the left of what you typed, drop it on your desktop. See an example here.
double-click in this icon to start Webmagic.

The main screen

You will be placed on the Webmagic main screen, as shown here. What you see is a set of menus and buttons to include markups.

What can the buttons do?

body button (paragraph markup button): allows you to format a paragraph as body (regular text), lists (bulleted and numbered), Heading (1-6), preformatted or block quoted text (maintains the original text font, format and punctuation).
default font button: allows you to apply to selected (highlighted) text a given font, or emphasis like bold, italic, etc. We will see more on emphasis later.
link button : allows you to create links from your page to other pages and locations. We will see this as an individual topic below.
target button : allows you to create links from your page to specific places in your page, other pages and locations.
line break button : allows you to change to another line without starting a paragraph.
horizontal line button : allows you to draw an horizontal line, to separate parts of text.
indent and outdent buttons (the last two): allow you to modify the placement of items in a list.
please note: You create new paragraphs by pressing Enter. No special button is needed.

How about the pull-down menus at the top?

File: let you perform traditional file operations, like save as, close, etc. Two items -- Insert and Preferences -- require special attention.
1. Insert: let you insert a document in text (ASCII) format, Images to be shown in the page (in-line images) and HTML marked text. Be sure you have your cursor in the place you want to insert text, image or HTML, before using this command.
2. Preferences: it is important that you set preferences before you start creating your pages, to be later transferred to UBMail. See this example for the dialog box that opens when you choose preferences.
  You must enter the host root address (ubmail.ubalt.edu for UBMail). Also the address in the SGI of the directory you are using to save your webfiles, as the project root directory.
Edit: In addition to cut, copy, paste, delete, it also allows special HTML editing functions:
1. document title: let you enter a title to the document. This should be placed before any text for the page.
2. modify link: select a link, choose this command and you will be able to edit the information on the link.
3. modify target: similar to links for targets.
4. image alignment: will let you change the alignment (top, bottom, center) of a selected image.
5. image alternate text: let you enter text to be seen by browsers that cannot display graphics.
6. markup: let you enter raw markup tags.
tools: similar functions as obtained by the buttons (link, target, etc).
view: show symbols and targets.
help: contex-sensitive, search and tutorial.

Inserting a text file to markup in Webmagic

create a file containing the materials you would like to see in your Web page, using your favorite word processor, have it spell checked, and save it as text (ASCII).
set your project root directory, using File, Preferences.
use the Edit, Document Title command and enter a title at the top of your document.
use the File, Insert, Text command to insert the text for your page in Webmagic.
use the buttons to enter HTML markups in the text you just inserted.

Special buttons and HTML markups

In-line images: click on the the Link button to open the link and image dialog box. Browse or type the image URL. Webmagic will create the markup for you. Please select inline image as shown, and enter an alternate text to be displayed by browsers that cannot display graphics. You can also use the File, Insert, image command for this purpose.

Links to other pages: click on the the Link button to open the link and image dialog box. Browse or type the link file or page URL. Webmagic will create the markup for you. Please select external link, in this case.

Bullets (ordered or unordered lists): click on the Body button and select a bullet (unordered) list, or a numbered list. Webmagic will create the basic markups for you. To add items to the list just press enter and type the item text. To finish entering items select the Body button again, and select body.

Emphasis : click on the Default Font button to provide emphasis to your text. Avoid, at all costs, the underline style, for it is used by the browsers to indicate links. Use the emphasis style instead of bold, for the latter may create unintended results in some browsers. Use italic sparingly, for some browsers cannot display it, showing the text with the emphasis or bold style.

This page is maintained by Al Bento who can be reached at abento@ubmail.ubalt.edu. This page was last updated on June 3, 1995. Although we will attempt to keep this information accurate, we can not guarantee the accuracy of the information provided.