HoTMetaL

Last updated
HoTMetaL Pro 6
Developer(s) SoftQuad Software
Stable release
6.0
Operating system Windows 9x, Windows NT 4, System 6 [1]
Type HTML editor
License Proprietary
Website www.hotmetalpro.com   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

HoTMetaL is an early commercial HTML-authoring software program, released in 1994 by SoftQuad Software of Toronto, Canada.

Contents

Based on the SGML engine of SoftQuad Author/Editor, HoTMetaL was released with a free version (HoTMetal Free) and a professional version (HoTMetaL Pro). There was also a "light" version. It received PC Magazine's Editors' Choice Award in 1995 as well as a variety of other awards. However the port to the Mac platform was regarded as poorly executed. [2]

HoTMetaL went through several incarnations from versions 1 though 6. The Macintosh version survived until at least version 3. [3] Eventually, the product line was discontinued as an HTML editor, although the user interface lives on in XMetaL, a commercial XML editor.

The editor had several views (including text and WYSIWYG), most notably the "Tags-On" view. This provided a WYSIWYG-like view of the page being edited with overlay icons showing where the code tags started and ended. This view is still used in the XML editing module of Adobe InDesign.

On 15 March 2002, the Corel Corporation acquired SoftQuad, although the Corel web site has no reference to HoTMetaL or any other web development tools. [4]

During the development of SGI's WebForce line, SGI considered having SoftQuad port HoTMetaL Pro to IRIX for inclusion on the WebForce version of the Indy workstation. While pitching the idea of WebForce to SGI executives, SGI employee John McCrea passed around a copy of HoTMetaL Pro in its retail packaging. [5] SGI eventually opted to purchase and port a partially finished HTML editor, then in development for Solaris from Amdahl Corporation instead. [6]

The name

The capital letters in HoTMetaL spell HTML. The term comes from hot metal typesetting which involves melting alloys into the shape of letters so they can be used by Linotype machines to print words on paper.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HTML</span> HyperText Markup Language

The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Markup language</span> Modern system for annotating a document

A markuplanguage is a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document or to enrich its content to facilitate automated processing.

In computing, WYSIWYG, an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web page, or slide presentation. WYSIWYG implies a user interface that allows the user to view something very similar to the end result while the document is being created. In general, WYSIWYG implies the ability to directly manipulate the layout of a document without having to type or remember names of layout commands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WordPerfect</span> Word processing application

WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Corel, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the dominant player in the word processor market, displacing the prior market leader WordStar.

A HTML editor is a program used for editing HTML, the markup of a web page. Although the HTML markup in a web page can be controlled with any text editor, specialized HTML editors can offer convenience, added functionality, and organisation. For example, many HTML editors handle not only HTML, but also related technologies such as CSS, XML and JavaScript or ECMAScript. In some cases they also manage communication with remote web servers via FTP and WebDAV, and version control systems such as Subversion or Git. Many word processing, graphic design and page layout programs that are not dedicated to web design, such as Microsoft Word or Quark XPress, also have the ability to function as HTML editors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quanta Plus</span> Source code editor

Quanta Plus, originally called Quanta, is a web Integrated development environment (IDE) for HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, PHP and any other XML-based languages or scripting languages. Quanta was licensed under GPL before the release of version 2.0 final.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WYSIWYM</span> Acronym for "what you see is what you mean"

In computing, What You See Is What You Mean is a paradigm for editing a structured document. It is an adjunct to the better-known WYSIWYG paradigm, which displays the result of a formatted document as it will appear on screen or in print—without showing the descriptive code underneath.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mozilla Composer</span> HTML editor and web authoring module of the Mozilla Application Suite

Mozilla Composer is the free and open-source HTML editor and web authoring module of the Mozilla Application Suite. It is used to create and to edit web pages, e-mail, and text documents easily. It is compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux. Composer is a graphical WYSIWYG HTML editor. One also can view, write and edit HTML source code with Composer.

An XML editor is a markup language editor with added functionality to facilitate the editing of XML. This can be done using a plain text editor, with all the code visible, but XML editors have added facilities like tag completion and menus and buttons for tasks that are common in XML editing, based on data supplied with document type definition (DTD) or the XML tree.

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of wiki software packages.

Yuri Ivan Rubinsky was a Lebanese-born writer, software executive, and promoter of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which was the basis for the now-ubiquitous XML. In Canada, he is probably best known as founding co-director of the Banff Publishing Workshop and for his work in applying technology to help visually impaired people. The Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award was created posthumously in his memory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quick View</span>

Quick View is a file viewer in Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems. The viewer can be used to view practically any file.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oxygen XML Editor</span>

The Oxygen XML Editor is a multi-platform XML editor, XSLT/XQuery debugger and profiler with Unicode support. It is a Java application so it can run in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It also has a version that can run as an Eclipse plugin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SoftQuad Software</span>

SoftQuad Software was a Canadian software company best known for HoTMetaL, the first commercial HTML editor. It is also known for Author/Editor, the first specialized SGML editor, and Panorama, the first browser plugin for SGML. Panorama demonstrated the need for standardization of SGML on the web, which eventually resulted in the development of the XML specification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NetObjects Fusion</span>

NetObjectsFusion (NOF) is a web design tool, from 1996 to 2001 developed and distributed by NetObjects, Inc., marketed from 2001 until 2009 by Web.com, which acquired the application in 2001, and from July 2009 on distributed again by the re-established NetObjects, Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">XMetaL</span>

XMetaL, or XMetaL Author, is a software application people use to create and edit documents in XML and SGML. It has some features common to word processors, but is a native XML editor that can be configured to work with various standard and custom DTDs and XML Schemas. XMetaL was first released by SoftQuad Software in 1999 and is currently developed by JustSystems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">XML Notepad</span> XML editor developed by Microsoft

XML Notepad is an open-source XML editor written by Chris Lovett and published by Microsoft. The editor features incremental search in both tree and text views, drag/drop support, IntelliSense, find/replace with regular expressions and XPath expressions, and support for XInclude. The editor has good performance on large XML documents and has real time XML schema validation. The editor also features an HTML viewer for displaying XSLT transformation results and a built-in XML comparison tool.

References

  1. "HotMetal Pro 6.0". System Requirements. Amazon. Retrieved 12 April 2010.
  2. "Getting Warmer: HoTMetaL PRO 2.0". TidBITS. 12 February 1996. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
  3. "HTMLbits From the Expo". TidBITS. 12 August 1996. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
  4. "Welcome to hotmetalpro.com (Internet Archive)". Archived from the original on 1 February 2011. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  5. therealmccrea (2014-11-19). "The Big Pitch to TJ and the Exec Team". The Real McCrea. Retrieved 9 October 2016.
  6. therealmccrea (2014-12-26). "The Untold (and Rather Improbable) Story Behind the First Real HTML Editor". The Real McCrea. Retrieved 9 October 2016.