Notes on Terminology

MTX Terminology

MTX files consist of content (text) interspersed with formatting tags.

Tags come in three varieties:

Page Tags - Special information about the page (title, author, etc.)
Line Tags - Line formatting (blockquote, horizontal rule, etc.)
Embedded Tags - Local formatting elements (images, hypertext, etc.)

Page Tags

Page tags must appear one to a line with a percent sign (%) as the first character. Most page tags are followed by additional text. For example "%TITLE xyz" sets the document title to "xyz." In some cases this additional text is referred to as a switch. For example the "long" in the line "%OUTLINE long" switches the outline type to long. Here are some examples of page tags:

  %TITLE Notes on Terminology
  %AUTHOR Richard Rathe / rrathe@dean.med.ufl.edu
  %AUTHURL rrathe@dean.med.ufl.edu
  %VERSION MTX 1.4 User's Manual / Copyright 1996 by the University of Florida
  %PATH http://www.med.ufl.edu/medinfo/mtx/docs14/
  %MTX 1.4

Line Tags

These tags always appear as the first character on a line. They effect the entire line that follows. For example, a leading single quote (') creates an indented HTML block quote. Here is an example:

  'This line will become an indented block quote.

Embedded Tags

Embedded tags can appear anywhere in the document. They are used for three types of formatting:

Text Formatting - Bold, italics, line break, etc.
Hypertext Links - Hot text that is linked to another document
Images - Various in-line graphic formats

These tags always begin and end with curly braces ({}). For example, "{*strong*}" becomes strong. The star (*) characters indicate that this is the tag for strong text. Here is another example:

  Embed an {=image=} in this line.

In this case the equal signs (=) indicate that this is the tag for an in-line image.

HTML Terminology

HTML stands for "HyperText Markup Language." It is the lingua franca of the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, HTML is not a very human-friendly language and HTML terminology can be confusing. As you read this document keep the following conventions in mind:

URLs

URL stands for "Uniform Resource Locator." We use URL to mean any linkable entity, not just HTML documents (the "mailto:" URL for example).

URLs can be complete or relative. A complete URL such as "http://www.ufl.edu/" specifies all information necessary for the link. A relative URL such as "index.html" is often just a file name. The rest of the information must be filled in based on the context of the document (the current directory). Partial paths such as "images/picture.gif" are also acceptable. Indicate the parent of the current directory with two periods (..) as in "../index.html."

Anchors

In HTML, the term "anchor" describes both the source and destination for hypertext links. This is an extremely confusing and unfortunate semantic oversight. In the context of MTX, this terminology has been corrected as follows:

The term link refers to the source of a link ("HREF=" in HTML).
The term anchor refers to the destination for a link inside a document ("NAME=" in HTML).
The term page refers a single HTML file. Links often point to entire pages without the need for anchors.

Other Terms

The term heading refers to the title of a section within an HTML page. Headings are often displayed in a larger font set off by extra white space.
The term section refers to the content following a heading.
The term suite refers to several pages tightly linked together to form a larger document. The actual HTML files are often kept together in a single directory.
The term slide set refers to a collection of pages linked together as a slide presentation.

Updated: July 13, 1996 at 8:25 PM
Version: MTX 1.4 User's Manual / Copyright 1996 by the University of Florida
Location: http://www.med.ufl.edu/medinfo/mtx/docs14/terminol.html
Author: Richard Rathe / rrathe@dean.med.ufl.edu