How to use Tidy in UE 13.00a?

[moerl]

I'm very new to learning XHTML with CSS and using the "Head First XHTML with CSS" book to do so. It's fun and I've been following along nicely. I've gone through about half of the book now.

I now know how to use the official W3C validator service (http://validator.w3.org/) and now I'm wondering how I could use Tidy from inside UE to speed things up even more .

First off, I know about the Tidy toolbar button at the bottom (5th from the right). Using that seems to work just fine. I just want to know what version of Tidy my UE is using? And how can I update Tidy to the very latest version?

Further, is there a good explanation page for the options anywhere? Since I'm new to all this, I don't really know what all the options are doing and what I should be enabling/disabling.

Thanks!

[Mofi]

I just want to know what version of Tidy my UE is using?

Click on the button Options, check first option named Tidy-mark, close the options dialog with button OK, check also the option Generate "tidy" document and press button Parse.

You should get in a new edit window your HTML file created with HTML Tidy and this file contains at top the line:

<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 12 April 2005), see www.w3.org">

or something similar. This line is written to the output only with the Tidy-mark option.


Further, is there a good explanation page for the options anywhere?

The help of UE for the HTML Tidy command contains the links to the HTML Tidy Library Project on the sourceforge website and to the Quick Reference page for the HTML Tidy configuration options. All other documents available are also linked on the main HTML Tidy project page.


And how can I update Tidy to the very latest version?

It is often better to use a stable and good working version than always the latest version. The latest version of open source projects should be better used only by experts and not by newbies.

However, you can find the source code for compilation by yourself and some binaries also on the HTML Tidy project page. But I don't know if the latest version is compatible with the integrated functions of UltraEdit for HTML Tidy. So be very careful when you exchange tidylib.dll in the UltraEdit program directory with a newer version. Create first a backup and save all files and documents first and close all other programs before you first start UltraEdit with the updated DLL. The DLL is statically loaded on startup of UltraEdit. So you can't update it while UE is running.

You can use instead of the integrated HTML Tidy the EXE version via a user tool configuration. That will allow you to always use the latest version without any compatibility problems with the UE support for HTML Tidy.

Because you are a beginner, you better read about the options and play a little with it and forget at the moment using the latest version.