Volume Number: 13 (1997)
Issue Number: 2
Column Tag: Symantec Top Ten

Symantec Top 10

By Kevin Kenan

This month's Top Ten ranges over several Symantec products, but we begin with a couple of issues regarding Visual Page, Symantec's new WYSIWYG HTML editor

Visual Page is an excellent companion to Visual Café, and a preview release can also be downloaded from http://cafe.symantec.com/. We follow the Visual Page section with questions involving Café and its documentation generator and finally we address a problem with the Visual Architect.

Q: How do I use anchors in Visual Page?

A: In order for the Anchor icon to become enabled, your Visual Page document must first be saved to disk. Then, select the text that will serve as the anchor, and click on the Anchor icon or choose Anchor from the Insert menu. A small anchor marker will appear on the left of the text that was selected. Double clicking the marker will bring up a dialog box for naming the anchor. A mouse click on OK saves the name.

To generate a link to the newly created anchor, select the text that you want to serve as the colored link and simply drag the anchor marker and drop it on the selection. This even works between Visual Page documents.

Q: How do I create a link to another page (as opposed to an anchor in another page) using Visual Page?

A: There are several ways to link to another page and the method you use depends on where the page is and how well you know the URL. If you know the URL you can simply select some text and type the URL in the "Link To:" field at the bottom of Visual Page. After you press return, the selected text is linked to the URL. There are, however, easier and more elegant ways to manage your links.

To use drag-and-drop to link files, simply drag an HTML file from the Finder and drop it onto some selected text. The selected text is now linked to that HTML file. It is easier to update the structure of your links if all your HTML files are grouped together in a single folder, but if you decide to organize your pages in a set of nested folders, you must be cautious when altering the structure of your nested folders or else your links might break.

When you want to link to a page on the Internet, Netscape's drag-and-drop capabilities make this otherwise laborious cut and paste operation quick and intuitive. Using Netscape, navigate to a page that has links you want to duplicate. Drag a colored link from the Netscape window and drop it onto some selected text in Visual Page. The selected text and that web page are now linked. Note that you can also drop the text from Netscape anywhere on your Visual Page document, not just on selected text. In this case, Visual Page simply creates a link using whatever text identified the link in Netscape.

Q: How do I embed a Java applet into my Visual Page document?

A: For an example, we will use the Animation demo which you can find in the Demo Projects:Intro to Java Programming:Animation folder on your Café CD. If you installed the default distribution of Café, then the Demo Projects folder will also be on your hard drive. First generate the .class files by selecting Build Applet Classes from the Build menu. When the compiler is done, we can embed the applet in a Visual Page document.

1) Open the Animation folder in the Finder; you will see that Café has added two new files to this folder: Animation.class and Animator.class.

2) Bring your Visual Page document to the front so that you can still see the icons for the new .class files.

3) Drag the Animation.class file onto your Visual Page document and drop it wherever you please. A dotted box appears with a picture of Duke waving and the label Animation.class.

4) Double click on the picture of Duke and a dialog box appears allowing you to set the Applets parameters.

5) Change both the Width and Height to 160 and click OK.

6) Save your Visual Page document and you are ready to view your new, applet-enhanced web page in any Java aware browser.

7) Choose Browse in the Edit menu to open your Visual Page document in a web browser. You may first need to tell Visual Page where your browser is by selecting Preferences in the Edit menu and clicking on the browser icon.

We dragged Animation.class rather than Animator.class onto the Visual Page window because the Animation class extends the Applet class. In general, always drop the .class file that extends the Applet class.

Q: Does Café implement Java's documentation generator?

A: Yes. In fact, included in your Café distribution you will find HTML documentation of the entire Java API. They are located at Symantec Café for Macintosh:(Java Libraries):API Documentation. Double click on the packages.html file to open it in Netscape. You can now explore the Java API in the comfort of your own web browser. Integrating the documentation for your own classes into this collection simple requires a menu selection.

1) Open a project window - the Animation project we used in the previous Answer works just fine.

2) Select a .java source file.

3) Choose Produce Documentation from the Build menu.

After a few seconds a documentation file for each class in the .java source will appear in the API Documentation folder. If you used the Animation project, then two new files, Animation.html and Animator.html, were produced. Generating documentation for an entire project is simple as well.

4) Bring you project's window to the front.

5) Select Generate All Documentation from the menu.

A dialog box will ask you to confirm your desire to produce the documentation; press OK and off you go.

Q: I followed the above directions with the Animation project, but no documentation was produced. Why?

A: The documentation files were most likely produced, but placed in a different folder. You can specify where a project's documentation is produced by selecting Options from the Project menu. In the window that opens click on the Project Type icon in the left column. You can now set the Documentation directory as you choose. Factory Settings direct the documentation to the API Documentation folder.

Q: I set the Options so that my project's documentation is produced in the project file, but now when I browse the HTML files in Netscape the graphics do not appear and links to other java classes are broken.

A: The project manager expects all documentation files to be together in one folder though you can specify which folder. A good strategy for keeping all your documentation in a single folder while retaining access to them from your project file requires you to first generate the documentation in the project folder. Then make aliases of the files, and move the originals to the API Documentation folder or whatever folder you have specified for your documentation. Now when you double click on one of the aliases, Netscape opens the original and the graphics and links work.

Q: I like having the documentation produced in my project folder, but I would rather not reset the options for each new project. Is there a way to tell the project manager to always set the appropriate options whenever I create a new applet?

A: Most definitely. Inside Symantec Café for Macintosh:(Project Models):Java Applet you will find a project file called @1. Open this project by dragging it onto Café's project manager. Set the options for this project as you wish and close the project. Every new applet you create will inherit those options. You can even go so far as including a folder inside the Java Applet folder and set the options to always produce the documentation in that folder.

Q: When I use the Class Browser in Café, and double click on an italicized class name, I get an error of -43; I would rather get a description of the class.

A: An italicized class name means that the java source for that class in unavailable for the Class Browser to read. Instead, you can set up InternetConfig (included in the Third Party Goodies folder on you CD) to point to your web browser. Then, when you double click the class name your web browser opens to display the HTML documentation as described earlier. An important detail to keep in mind, though, is that the Class Browser tells your web browser to look in whatever folder you have specified for documentation. If you are producing documentation in your project file, the web browser will not find the java classes.

Q: I am experimenting with packages by putting the above Animation project into a package called my_java_classes.my_animation. But when I try to generate the documentation all I get is the HTML file for the Animator class. What happened to the documentation for the Animation class?

A: Documentation files are named after the full package name, and when your package name is prepended to the class names, you end up with a file name longer than the Macintosh's maximum of 31 characters. The overflow characters are simply cut off and in this case the resulting names are identical. Both documentation files are produced, but the last one produced overwrites the first. To resolve this, use shorter package names.

Q: Visual Architect v8.1 does not seem to create a floating pallet with the drag bar on the side rather than the top. Why not?

A: Visual Architect v8.1 apparently generates a faulty WDEF for floating pallets. A resource internal to VA is used to generate the WDEF, and the solution requires us to replace this internal faulty resource.

1) Retrieve the Infinity Windoid WDEF 2.6 code resource from <gopher://micros.hensa.ac.uk:70/40/micros/mac/finder//m/m036/>. The file you want is called m036infin.hqx. Netscape can easily do this; simply paste the above URL into the "Go To:" field and press return.

2) Use ResEdit to open the ResEdit file Infinity Windoid 2.6.

3) Double click on the WDEF resource that appears in the Infinity Windoid 2.6 window.

4) From the Edit menu, choose Copy.

5) Make sure the Visual Architect application is not running, and open it with ResEdit.

6) Find the WDEF resource within ResEdit's Visual Architect window. Open the resource by double clicking its icon.

7) Select the resource numbered 200 and choose Clear from the Edit menu.

8) Now choose Paste from the Edit menu. A resource with the name "Infinity Windoid 2.6" should appear.

9) Make sure this new resource is selected and choose Get Resource Info from the Resource menu.

10) Change the ID field to 200 and un-check "Purgeable."

11) Close the ResEdit windows and save the changes when prompted. Visual Architect is now ready for use.

Special thanks to Mark Baldwin, Ted Flug, Richard Hill,
Matthew Hopkins, Steve Howard, Scott Morison, Kevin Quah, and Steve Wolf for their contributions to this article.