CardShark BidBase
HTML File Viewer/Editor

Copyright 2004-2005 Ford Software

This is the documentation for this HTML file viewer/editor.
Click on File - New to start a new file or Open to view an existing file.
Press F11 to view the HTML source for this file while reading it.
Right-click on a link to open it in a new window.

The Document Display Windows

This viewer has two display panels (or "windows"). With these, you can view two different documents at once or different parts of the same file.

For example, if the right window is closed and you click on a link in the left window, such as in the Table Of Contents, the selected part of the same file will be displayed in the right window, leaving the Table Of Contents in the left window for easy future use. (If this doesn't work for you, make sure that you have checked Files - Open files/links in right window.)

Editing Files:

When you are using a window as a browser, you cannot make changes to the file you are viewing. To make changes, you must click Edit - Edit HTML to edit the code for the HTML document that is in the left window. If you want to edit the document which is in the right window, click File - Swap Panels to move it to the left window.

When you select Edit - Edit HTML, the right window is no longer a browser, it is a text editor. Each time you press Ctrl-S (or File-Save) to save your work, you will see in the left window (browser) the results of your work.

This is not a full-blown HTML editor; it does not have built-in, automated support for frames or javascript, for example, but for purposes of creating information files for BidBase, these things should not be needed. And although the editor does not support such things, the browser windows will display them when an HTML file already has them in it.

The editor does have some features which make entering HTML code a little easier. The HTML menu contains shortcuts for entering the most common HTML code, creating tables, setting colors, etc.

TIP: The easiest way to access the HTML menu is to right-click in the code window.
Changing Sizes of Windows:
You can change the widths of the two windows by moving the cursor between them. The cursor will change to a horizontal double arrow. Click and drag the bar between the windows.

Disclosure Note Files

Because notes for a specific entry are normally much simpler and shorter than notes about a convention, the default is to store them in simpler and shorter text files ("*.TXT") instead of HTM files. (If lengthy notes are needed, they probably belong in the Convention Name note file.)

When you click the button to create a new note file, the file is created on disk. The file name consists of the prior bids, the current bid, the entry's ID# and a ".TXT" extension
(e.g.: 1C-1S_ID1234.txt).

To convert a TXT file to an HTML file, first click on the source file in the right box, then click the HTML menu, and HTML Start-End menu item. Then click File and Save As to save the file with an HTM extension, then delete the original *.TXT file.

File Menu

New File (F4)

Starts a new HTML file.

Open File (F5)

Notes

BidBase

While you normally open note files from the BidBase Editor by clicking on a button, this menu option gives you direct access to open any file in the Notes folder. (Or any other web pages on your hard drive or the Web, for that matter.)

While this program is intended primarily for viewing help files on your hard driver (specifically, BidBase help and note files), there are several ways you can get to a Web page.

One way is by putting a link to a Web page in a file and clicking on it.

A second way is to click on the Search globe button.

The most direct way is to type a URL into one of the caption boxes above each window/panel and then press Enter.

However, because this program is not intended primarily as a full Web browser, it will not support some features found in some web pages, such as scripts.

Open Links/Files in Right Window

Checking Open links/files in Right window causes this to happen.

To move a file from the right window to the left window, see Swap Panels, below.

Close Right Panel (F6)

Lets you close the right window/panel, if it is open.

Swap Panels (F7)

Edit - Edit HTML

Change Monitors (Shift-F2)

This file viewer initially comes up on the primary monitor. You can drag it to the other monitor and, if the second monitor is a different size, manually resize it, or you can click this menu option and the file viewer will automatically move to and adjust to the full screen of the second monitor.

If you already have a multi-monitor manager, you can just use it, although in some situations, the built-in support may work better. If you have more than two monitors, your software will probably manage better.

This program will also keep track of which monitor you last have this viewer on, then start it there next time.

Delete File

Input Boxes

So if you start to create a new file and change your mind, you should delete it rather than just closing the viewer.

Other than the situation just discussed, you rarely should delete files from the Notes folder.

The program will only delete a file which is currently being viewed.

Save Source (Ctrl-S)

Saves changes to the current file. This option only works if you are editing an HTML or TXT source file, since you cannot make changes directly to a web page.

Save Source As

Saves changes to the current file, but to a different file name. Again, this only works if you are editing an HTML or TXT source file.

Save Web Page

Edit HTML

F11

But if you are viewing a document on the Internet with this program, you have to save the source file to your hard disk using this menu command before you edit it.

Recent Files

Recent Files

Due to space constraints, the paths are saved but not shown. For purposes of BidBase, the path should usually be to the Notes folder, but you can open files in other folders as well.

Click on a file name in the Recent Files list to load it.

Edit Menu

Edit HTML (F11)

If you are viewing a page which is on the Web, you will get an error message if you try to edit the HTML code. You must first save the HTML code to disk using File - Save Web Page. This will save the HTML code (when possible) and then display it in the right edit window.

Find/Replace (Ctrl-F)

Find

Replace

An additional option is to ignore text in angled brackets ( < > ). This is primarily intended to prevent accidentally altering HTML code when doing a Replace All.

If you do any replacements, then when you exit the Find/Replace window, you will be asked if you want to save your changes. If you say yes, the changes will be left as made in the source window, but not saved to disk until you click File - Save.

SpellCheck Document (F12) and
SpellCheck Word (Ctrl-W)

To check on a single word, first highlight it (by double-clicking or click-and-drag, etc.), then press Ctrl-W.

These functions can use either BidBase File Viewer's own built-in spelling checker or the spelling checker built into Microsoft Word (if it is on your system). Our's is much faster to load, but requires a large word database file which you may not have gotten with this program because of its size.

If you try to use the built-in spelling checker and the program tells you that the spelling database file is missing, try going back to where you got the program to see if the database file is available separately.

Likewise, using MS Word's spelling checker requires you to have MS Word. If you don't have either Word or our spelling database, then your last alternative is to browse the Web for a spell checker which resides any memory and works with any program in Windows as you type. These are usually available at a reasonable price and, as mentioned, can be used with other programs.

Built-In Spell-Check Functions:

When you use the built-in spelling checker, a window slides out which shows you an unknown word at the top, some buttons, then a replacement word followed by a list of suggested replacements.

The spell checker always starts at the start of the file, and it ignores HTML code. Also ignored are words which have in them any uppercase letters (other than the first letter) or any non-alphabetic letters other than a hyphen ("-") or apostrophe.

If text is displayed as not being in the spelling database, then if you know it is a good, correctly spelled word, you can click Add Word to add it to the database.

If it is text which you do not want added to the database, but you don't want to change, such as an abbreviation or a name, you can tell the program to ignore it, either one time or throughout the document.

Be cautious of adding abbreviations to the database, since they can cause misspelled words to be accepted. For example, if you add comp as an abbreviation of computer or compensation, then you later type comp when you meant to type camp, the computer will not flag it as a misspelling because you have said that comp is a good word. Of course, this can happen with any word, not just abbreviations.

Because the number of hyphenated words which can be made from two or more other words is unlimited, when a hyphenated word is not found in the database, it is split into its component words and if they are all found, the hyphenated word is okayed. If a component word is not in the database, then it is highlighted by itself rather than the whole hyphenated word.

The same is true of any word starting with common prefixes with which new words can be made from existing words, such as "uncheck". If the word after the prefix is in the database, than the word is okayed.

If a word is not in the word database, a list of alternatives (words with the same Soundex code) is displayed in a list box. Click on a word to copy it to the Replace box, then click the Replace With button.

You may also enter a new word into the Replace With box which is not in the list and use it to replace the misspelled word. Your new word will then be checked to make sure that it is in the database.

Suits to Symbols and Undo

The program attempts to insure that a substitution doesn't take place in the middle of a link (which would keep the link from working).

If a substitution occurs in the middle of a Heading, a larger graphic is used which should be equal to the font size, but if it is not because of system video differences, you can change back to the suit letter.

An unusual layout may result in an inappropriate, undesired substitution, so after doing this change, look over the file to make sure that everything appears the way it should. If it doesn't, you can edit small problems in the source code, but for really big problems, you may want to select the Undo menu option.

If text is highlighted, this menu option will work only on the highlighted text; otherwise, it works on the entire file.

Make Symbols For Hands (Ctrl-M)

K432-AJ53-T874-3

Just highlight the hand, then press Ctrl-M.

Make Table Of Contents

Table Of Contents

Normally, the title of the document, such as "Jacoby 2N", is marked as a header with "<H1>" on the left and "</H1>" on the right.

Throughout the document should be sections with H2 headings and those might be broken into subsections with H3 headings.

This function copies those H2 and H3 headings to the front of the document to create a Table of Contents with internal links back to the sections.

HTML Menu

MS Word

A couple of quirks of HTML --

Multiple blank spaces are ignored beyond the first space, so, for example, you cannot use multiple spaces to format text spacing.
Line breaks in an HTML source file are ignored completely. To get line breaks, you must use the Break and Paragraph commands.
On the other hand, HTML adds unrequested line breaks and blank lines to some commands, such as Headers and Indents.

An exception is when a TXT file is displayed in a browser, the spaces and line breaks are all used.

Another exception is when you use HTML's PRE command, after which text is displayed just as you enter it (i.e.: PRE-formatted).

HTML Start-End (Ctrl-H)

If you do not want to put everything in a Table, you can delete the Table commands and, if you wish, use the margin commands instead.

Colors

Text Colors lets you change the color of specific text. Just highlight the text, select this option, and pick a color. Then press Ctrl-S to save and view the results.

The Color Code option lets you select a color with the color picker, then it inserts the color code into the source where you last clicked.

If you are replacing an already existing color code, first highlight it (by clicking and dragging) before clicking on this menu option. However, if you forget, you will have two color codes and can just delete the old one.

Header1-3 (H1/H2/H3)

First highlight the header text, then select Header1, 2, or 3. Or you can insert the header commands and type your text into them.

To highlight text, click and drag, or click at the start and hold down a shift key while you either click on the end or use the right cursor key to move to the end.

Header1 is the largest and would normally just be used for the file title, so it is automatically centered.

Header2 is used for major headings and Header3, for sub-headers, such as the one above. Header4 would be about the same size as regular text, so rather than Header4, just use Bold to highlight the desired text.

Header5 was used to write the notes at the start of this file about opening a file, etc.

Note that headers are automatically offset from the preceding and following text, so the use of Break and Paragraph commands around them are not required, but they don't hurt anything either. Breaks can be used to split headers over more than one line.

Link Internal (Ctrl-L)

You can use Internal Links to jump from anywhere to anywhere else in a file for any reason.

First highlight the text you want to jump from and press Ctrl-L. You will be prompted to click on the point in the file you want to jump to, then press Ctrl-L again.

The program will look for the first unused link code, starting with "A", and use that to link to the jump destination. If the destination already has a link code, when you click on the point in the file to jump to, be sure to click on that code so that the program will reuse that link rather than create a new code for the same point.

After inserting the link code, if it looks okay, press Ctrl-S to save it and click on the link to test it.

Link External (Ctrl-E)

First highlight the text you want to link to a new page, then press Ctrl-E (for External link).

In the HTML page, when you click on the link, the new page will be brought up in the right window rather than replacing the page in the current window (unless the current window is the right window.)

Paragraph (Ctrl-P)

HTML ignores spaces and blank lines. (An exception to this if you load a file with a TXT extension into a browser or use the PRE command, then the text is displayed formatted just as entered.)

The Paragraph command starts a new paragraph, which essentially skips a line from the last text. Unlike the Break command, entering multiple Paragraph commands does not cause multiple lines to be skipped.

Although technically, you can enter an End-Paragraph, it is not necessary to do so (so why bother?). Therefore, you do not have to highlight all the text, just click at the start of a paragraph and press Ctrl-P.

When you press Ctrl-P, not only is the Paragraph command inserted, but any line breaks in the current paragraph are removed so that the lines will word-wrap in the editor.

Break (Ctrl-K)

Break causes the following text
to start on the next line rather than being appended to the same line. Two Break commands are the equivalent of one Paragraph command (see the source for the start of the next paragraph), but unlike the Paragraph, you can add more and more blank lines by inserting additional Break commands.

The exception is that if you put a Break command before a Paragraph or Heading command, you will not get an extra space. These commands are, in effect, two Breaks in a row. So to get extra space, you have to put 3 Breaks before a paragraph command. But at least you will get an extra space, as opposed to putting multiple Paragraph commands together.

As with the Paragraph command, you do not have to highlight any text before pressing Ctrl-K. Just put the cursor where you want the Break to come.

Numbered List

This is one thing.
This is a second thing.
This is a third thing, but it is
a lot longer thing than the other
two things. But still just gets
one number -- where the <LI> is.

HTML automatically numbers each line but only the lines which start with <LI>. (Press F11 to bring up the HTML code for this file to see how the above is done.)

While some HTML codes can be added to existing text by inserting them or by highlighting the text for them to wrap around, Lists and Tables are easier to handle if you insert the HTML first, then type into it.

Indent With Bullets (Ctrl-N)

This is one thing
This is another thing.
This is a line with no bullet.

Just as with Numbered Lists, you don't get a bullet unless you start a line with <LI>. This means that if you just want to indent a paragraph or a whole section of text (like the section you are reading now), keep the <UL> codes but delete the <LI>.

Also, if you look at the source code for this section, you will see that just as with a paragraph, you do not have to close the List command with a </LI>, but you MUST have a </UL>

Sometimes the Indent command inserts a blank line before the list starts, although it is not doing it in this section for whatever reason.

In fact, we have never been able to figure out why HTML adds a line sometimes but not others, but if it does add a blank line, there is no way to remove it, which brings us to the next menu item -

Indent Without Break

the Indent Without Break actually uses a Table where the first column is left blank and all the indented text is put into the second column.

Keep in mind that in a table, the Break, Paragraph, and other formatting commands can be used to format multiple paragraphs or lines of text within a single table cell.
In fact, when this programs starts an HTML file for you, it creates a table into which all the other content of the page goes to allow better control of margins.

Notice how the table approach gives control over the amount of indentation simply by changing the width of the first (blank) column.
See the source code for this file to see exactly how this is done. Also notice that you can add a third column to create a right margin. The HTML menu does not offer this feature, but all you have to do is cut and paste the code from the first column's HTML. Compare the source for this table to the one above.

Bullet List Without Indentation

Now is the time

for all good men

to come to the aid

of their country.

The lines above show how to have lines with bullets which are not indented. Compare this again to an indented bullet list:

Now is the time

for all good men
to come to the aid
of their country.
- (One final indentation.)

Also notice that for each level of indentation, the color/style of the bullets changes.

One last bullet list option:

Most of this text here is blah, blah, blah,

but this line is really important!
but now back to the blah, blah, blah.
The line above with the bullet in the margin caused by an <LI> code without the <UL>.

Pre(formatted) Text

If you have a lot of text you want to appear 
      just the way you have typed it -- 
broken into lines and 
      indented, etc. -- 
you can   highlight   the lines and click on 
      HTML - PRE.

Look what happens to the font, though. In order to keep things formatted the way you had it, a fixed-width font is used, which will look noticeably different from the rest of your text.

Special Characters

Space

If you enter more than one space in HTML, they are collapsed into one space (except for in PRE -- see the space around "highlight", above), just as it collapses multiple lines into one paragraph.

If you just want to add a few spaces (browsers ignore more than 1 space), click on HTML - Space and the HTML code for a space will be entered. Again, see the HTML for this paragraph to see what's happening.

"<" and ">"

Break

So instead, click on "<" or ">" to insert the HTML code for these symbols rather than entering the actual symbols.

Table Specs Window

The best way to create a new table is to use the Table Specs Window, which lets you set and preview many different table parameters at once.

If you have the HTML source file open now so that the HTML menu items are enabled, you can click on HTML - Table - Table Specs Window now to see what it looks like.

For BidBase's note files, we normally just use tables to format text on the screen and do not use fancy options such as colors, borders, picture backgrounds, etc. However, those options are available in case you wish to use this editor for creating non-BidBase HTML pages.

Table (Ctrl-T)

Tables let you structure the layout of text on the screen. (Table frames are optional.)

If you already have text or data which you want to put into a table, highlight it, and press Ctrl-T.

Next you will want to start a Row. (See next section.)

Row (Ctrl-R)

Ctrl-R

Next you will want to start a Data Cell.

Data Cell (Ctrl-D)

Data Cell

Ctrl-D

Data Cells

Align Top / Width

More often than not, you will want the data with fewer lines to start at the top of the cell, not centered. If so, use the Align Top command.

If you do not use the Width command, the browser will assign a column width to each column in the table, and the result may not be what you want. If so, use the Width command to specify the width of each data cell.

All data cells in the same column must be the same width, so you only need to enter the column width in ONE of the TD commands.

Text Emphasis

Font

Windows font selector

First highlight the text to apply the changes to and then select this option.

Bidding Font (F5)

Changes bidding from 1C-D-P-1S to 1C-D-P-1S to make the bidding stand out more from the surrounding text.

Bold, Color, Italics, Underline
(Ctrl-B/I/U)

Highlight the text and the select the feature.

Normally, the text is automatically unhighlighted after the emphasis has been added, but since Bold and Italics are often used together, if you use Bold, the text will remain highlighted to give you the opportunity to press Ctrl-I to add Italics as well.

Browser Buttons

The left arrow scrolls back through previous documents. The right arrow scrolls forward through documents from which you have scrolled back. In both cases, the last window/pane clicked on is the window scrolled.

The globe with magnifying glass brings up a page for searching the web.

Once the search results are displayed, you should hold down the shift key if you click on a link. This will bring up your default web browser (e.g.: Internet Explorer) instead of displaying web pages in BidBase's built-in viewer. While the BidBase viewer can be used for web browsing, your default browser has a lot more features for browsing.

If you come across a web page on the Internet which you want to save, you can use your browser's Save-As menu line to save the page in the Notes folder, being careful not to overwrite existing files of the same name.

However, a page saved from the Internet may not display correctly when saved to disk unless you are still connected to the Internet. For example, links to images on the page often contain full "www" addresses, so if you try to view the page without being on the web, those images would not be displayed.

Resizing The Viewer

BidBase will remember the size and position of the window when displaying one file and when displaying two files and will adjust itself according to which you are doing.

When two files are displayed, you can move the cursor between the two windows, click, and drag.

CardShark BidBase HTML File Viewer/Editor