Site information page updated 12 January 2023.

These notes are linked from the main SF Encyclopedia Contributor Guidelines page (which see).

HTML editors

The working format for SFE3 is HTML, the markup language used for web pages. David Langford has written software for various editorial and format-checking tasks: this works directly with the HTML source, where headwords are marked <h1>like this</h1>, boldface <b>like this</b>, italics <i>like this</i>, and links like this: John <a href="/entry/clute_john">Clute</a>. Most people find this distracting if not wholly unnerving, and prefer some kind of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) presentation of the text.

If you are simply writing new entries, it's acceptable to use your word processor's normal boldface and italics options; mark links in curly brackets – for example, John {Clute} – and put entry headwords in normal upper and lower case on a line of their own: Clute, John. Save in HTML format (an option found under Save As in most word processors) and email to David Langford, whose address you will have been given. He will groan if you use Microsoft Word, which generates horribly messy HTML full of redundant information that needs extensive cleaning-up ... but that's his problem and he has written various tidying routines. However, life would be a little easier if you could bring yourself to create entries in a good HTML editor. One is suggested below.

If you are modifying existing entries, we really don't want our clean HTML text complicated by MS Word and other word processors which modify the codes and may corrupt or lose the information in active links. MS Word and many HTML editors also introduce "mess" in the form of unnecessary codes, font and style specifications, and other clutter irrelevant to our purposes, all of which takes time to shovel out of the stables. There are exceptions: Paul Kincaid is using Namo Webeditor, which produces clean enough results. John Clute and others are using the freeware editor KompoZer (formerly NVU), which is able to handle all the exotic accented characters required in foreign-language entries.

KompoZer can be downloaded from https://kompozer-web.de/en/ in versions for the PC, Macintosh and generic Linux systems.

This editor is easy to use, but needs one small change of setup for SFE3 work:

• In the PC version, go to the Tools menu, select Preferences or Options (whichever ), and turn off (untick or uncheck) the option "Use CSS styles instead of HTML elements ..."
• In the Macintosh version, make the same change under KompoZer: Preferences.
• In both versions ... you won't need the distraction of the "Site Manager" panel at the left of the main edit window, if this appears. Turn it off by pressing F9 (PC) or by going to the View menu, selecting Show/Hide, and unticking "Site manager" or "Sidebar".

That's all.

To answer the most frequently asked question about KompoZer use: a wide range of letters with diacriticals (é, ō) and other special characters (½, Æ) can be entered via the Insert menu option "Characters and Symbols".

Even when using an HTML editor, it's fine to mark links with {curly brackets} as suggested above. The Langford software will convert these to the actual link coding. Otherwise, we use the following HTML markers in SFE3:

• boldface (<b>) for the year of book publication, including rev(ised) and exp(anded) versions, and series titles such as Asimov's Foundation. However, short stories in anthologies, collections, magazines or newspapers are dated in plain roman with the source publication included if at all possible: (June 1970 Analog). Individual issues of comics are treated as equivalent to short stories with dates in plain roman; graphic novels are regarded as books with dates in bold, usually marked "graph" as in (graph 1987).
• italics (<i>) for titles of books, television series, films (but remember that {2001: A Space Odyssey} should be marked as a link and that only the article in The {X-Files} is italicized), and so on. Short story and episode titles appear in double quotes: "Nightfall", "The City at the Edge of Forever".
• italics (<i>) again for the year or year range of publication in most non-book media: in particular, film, tv, radio and audio releases.
• Header 1 (<h1>) for headwords.
• Header 2 (<h2>) for subheads within entries. These were rarely used in SFE2 for space reasons, but are now acceptable when needed. See for example the category divisions following the Hugo entry text.
• Header 3 (<h3>) for an author's (or editor's, artist's or other creator's) full name, appearing after the main entry and any see also links , and followed by born, died [omitted if the person is not known for sure to have died] and works in separate paragraphs, leading into the bibliographical Checklist.
• Unordered or bulleted lists (<ul>/<li>) – like the list containing this text – are used principally for bibliographical Checklists and lists of award winners.