HTML files and HTML Tidy

TABmate treats files suffixed HTM or HTML as HTML code and colours tags and quotes using syntax highlighting.

As well, a button appears marked Tidy HTML. Left-click this button to run the window contents through the well-known HTML Tidy program which is built in to many HTML authoring tools.

Tidy reformats the HTML code and fixes many common problems. Sometimes you have to run Tidy more than once, to get rid of all problems. In some cases Tidy will locate problems without fixing them.

If you right-click the Tidy HTML button, you will get diagnostic messages but your file will not be changed.

Tidy is able to fix up a wide range of problems and to bring to your attention things that you need to work on yourself. Each item found is listed with the line number and column so that you can see where the problem lies in your markup [You may need to use Edit..Properties to make line numbers visible in the left margin].

Tidy wont generate a cleaned up version when problems are too severe. These are logged as errors rather than warnings.

When Tidy reformats the HTML code, TABmate writes the modified version to disk.

Strict HTML conformance

You ought to know that most browsers kindly overlook various common HTML errors. Therefore, even if your Web page looks fine in your browser, it could still contain errors that might upset another browser. Strict checking, using Tidy, is the only way to be sure that hand-coded web pages are OK.

Controlling Tidy operation

Tidy has a great many options to control its action. The options are controlled by a supplied configuration file TIDY.CFG. As supplied, that file contains options used at the Centre of Policy Studies. You could edit or add the options. For a list of options see:

http://tidy.sourceforge.net/docs/quickref.html

Requirements

In order to run Tidy, TABmate requires that the following 2 files are present in the same folder as TABmate.EXE:

•TIDY.EXE : the TIDY program

•TIDY.CFG : configuration file for TIDY

Conceivably, the 2 files might be missing from a standard GEMPACK distribution. However, they are both contained in the BundleXX.EXE patch which you can download from:

http://www.copsmodels.com/gpmark9.htm

Credits

The original Tidy command line program was written by Dave Raggett, a senior architect of the HTML specification. Raggett now works for the W3C [World Wide Web Consortium]. Tidy is now maintained by a group of volunteers working together as part of the open source community at Source Forge: http://tidy.sourceforge.net.