Friday The Automatic FAQ Maker
We frequently update Friday to add features, make it work better/faster and to fix bugs.
Some of these features and fixes are experimental, at least until they've been tested thoroughly. We don't release our current in-house version until we're reasonably certain it's safe to turn loose.
That means that the version you originally downloaded and installed may not include all the new features listed here. If you see something you want, we're more than happy to share.
You can always download the most recently released version of Friday (FRIDAY.ZIP, roughly 350kb.
Click the link, save FRIDAY.ZIP to your desktop or any convenient location. Unzip the enclosed FRIDAY.EXE to the folder where you installed Friday. Allow it to overwrite the existing file of the same name.
We also update the Help information in this Friday Tutorial from time to time.
You can update Help in your own copy of Friday too ... simply Download FridayHelp.ZIP and unzip it to the /HELP folder you'll find in the folder where you installed Friday.
Once you do that, Friday's HELP button will give you the most up-to-date help available.
Friday can now generate HTML files with names based on the question text instead of just FAQxxx.htm style names. This can make your HTML files more search-engine-friendly.
Some characters used in your question might not be allowable in file names, Friday replaces any such characters with hyphens. Likewise, spaces aren't allowable on some systems, so they become spaces as well.
Friday still prefixes the new-style names with the old-style FAQ number so that the names sort properly.
For example, if the question for an entry is "Why me?" the new style name of the resulting HTML file might be "FAQ0042_Why_me.HTM" instead of the usual "FAQ0042.HTM"
To invoke this feature, edit the FQA file and add this line directly beneath the [APP] section marker:
HTMLFileAppendQuestion=YES
so it looks like:
[APP] HTMLFileAppendQuestion=YES
Now you'll get the new-style names for any new HTML you generate.
Friday now deletes any associated DES and KEY files (if any) when you delete a question.
There's a new feature that helps you automatically insert html code for a series of images.
Type the name of an image file, with or without full path, select the text then press Ctrl+K.
If no path is provided, Friday assumes you want to use the folder where your HTML is stored.
It then adds the necesary html code to insert each image that matches the file spec you provided.
For example, suppose you're creating a tutorial for a particular feature of a program and want to include several screenshots. Create the screenshots, give each a name like FEATURExxx.JPG (where xxx is a sequential number).
Click where you want to insert the screenshots, type FEATURE*.JPG, select the text, then press CTRL+K. Friday inserts each image that matches the FEATURE*.JPG spec into the answer, one after another.
By default, it surrounds each image file name with:
<center><img src="%path%%file%"/></center>
but you can change this by editing your FQA file and adding a "pattern" that Friday will use to produce the link. Add the pattern in the [Links] section of the FQA file (add the section if there's not already one there).
[Links] AddFilenamesPattern=<center><img src="%path%%file%"/></center>
Friday substitutes the name of the file for %file% and the path to the file for %path%
The HTML Color Picker now provides the HTML color, RGB color and VB-style color as a Long.
It puts all three on the clipboard in the form:
#FF00FF | R:255 G:0 B:255 | 16711935
After picking the color you want, you can paste it into your HTML or any other program and delete all but the color definition you want.
When you have Friday make a sitemap, normally it uses Friday's own list of questions and answers to determine which HTML files to include in the map.
If your site includes manually generated HTML files in addition to those maintained in Friday, they won't be included in the sitemap.
If you add this to your FQA file:
[SiteMap]
EnumHtmlFiles=YES
Friday will add every HTML file in your HTML folder to the sitemap, whether it's one of Friday's HTML files or not.
New default site map format:
Google, Yahoo and several other search sites now accept sitemap files in the format recommended by sitemaps.org
Friday now generates this format by default if there's no sitemap.txt file already in your FAQ folder. The only real change to the format is the xmlns= line in the file, which now points to sitemap.org instead of to google.)
HTMLEncodes the question when creating RSS feeds (so no problems with ampersands and such.
HTMLEncodes a name= tags and hrefs in links for same reason
NAME tags and the links that call them now have invalid characters replaced with
underscores or hyphens and Friday adds "name_" to beginning of string to ensure that the string starts with alpha characters.
When adding links from the link list in editor, we now use
[Links]
XREFTemplate=String
and perform several replacements on String
%Answer becomes the name of the html file containing the answer
%Question gets replaced with text of question in list box
For example:
XREFTemplate=<a href="%Answer">%Question</a> or <a href="%Answer" target="pptfaqnew">%Question (in a new window)</a>
Would give you two links to the question, one that opens in the same window, one that opens in a new window.
Search/Replace routine now recognizes
This means that you can now do e.g. something like this in your SNR.TXT file:
<CRLF><strong>=<CRLF><h3>
</strong><CRLF>=</h3><CRLF>
which will replace
<strong>This</strong>
with
<h3>This</h3>
but leave <strong>this</strong> untouched.
Further fixes to Break/NoBreak feature
User settings are now to be stored in FRIDAY.INI in the same folder as Friday itself so there's no more need to replicate the break settings in multiple FQA files.
Codes no longer need to be in UPPERCASE.
Google Site Map feature added
Friday can create a site map in the form Google requests
Add the following to Friday.FQA
[GoogleSiteMap]
MakeMap=YES
Whenever you click the Create button, Friday regenerates the sitemap file.
(sitemap.xml in your FAQ's HTML folder).
It uses a file called sitemap.txt as a template file. It looks for this file in your FAQ's FAQ folder; if the file's not there, it creates one automatically. This means that you can modify the existing sitemap.txt file if you wish, once you've allowed Friday to create it once.
If it seems useful, we'll add the ability to specify alternate template files and/or alternate locations for the template file.
When Friday creates a site map file, it automatically adds XML to the list of Upload file types in Friday.FQA; this way it'll upload the sitemap.xml file along with the rest of your FAQ files.
Learn more about Google Site Maps here
Notes:
Friday automatically supplies and/or updates the <loc> and <lastmod> fields specified by Google. It defaults to <changefreq>monthly</changefreq> and <priority>0.5</priority> but you can change these by editing sitemap.txt in your FAQ folder.
Friday applies the same ChangeFreq and Priority values to all pages in your FAQ.
It doesn't support per-entry values for either of these.
Friday doesn't automatically "escape" any special characters like Ampersand, Single/Double Quotes, GreaterThan, LessThan signs that appear in the URLs it adds to sitemap.xml. If you avoid these characters and accents/umlauts etc. in the path names on your server and in Friday's base answer file names, there should be no problems.
In order for Friday to supply a full URL to the files on your site, it needs the full URL to the folder where your FAQ files will be uploaded. You can supply this by adding a URLPrefix= line to the [WebSite] section of Friday.FQA:
[WebSite] URLPrefix=http://www.rdpslides.com/friday/tutorial/
Don't forget to add the forward slash to the end of this prefix!
Add Beep=NO to [App] section of Friday.FQA to turn off beeps when editing/finding, etc.
FIXED: several issues that caused Friday to add unwanted paragraph/break tags after e.g. heading and similar tags.
ADDED: ability for user to define custom "break tags" as follows (see below for explanation of what break tags are)
To create your own custom break tag list, locate and edit/add to this section in Friday.FQA (if it doesn't exist, Friday will create it on startup; if you're having problems with it, delete the section and let Friday re-create it afresh)
[BreakTags] Count = 20 BreakTag1=<UL NoBreakTag1=</UL> BreakTag2=<OL NoBreakTag2=</OL> ... and so on BreakTag20=<PRE NoBreakTag20=</PRE>
What are Break Tags?
When Friday converts your FAQ entries into HTML, it tries to maintain the paragraph endings and linebreaks you've added to your text. It does this by adding paragraph tags around each paragraph and doing a few other tricks.
If you've done your own tagging in your FAQ entry, you may not WANT Friday to add extra paragraph tags. Friday maintains an internal list of tags it shouldn't meddle with, so when it processes a line tagged as a heading, for example, it doesn't add paragraph tags.
If you use a tag that's not on its list, say an imaginary <BLAH> / </BLAH> tag, Friday may add unwanted paragraph tags. To prevent this, add your BLAH tags to the BreakTags list in Friday.FQA.
For each new tag you want to add, increment the Count= number by one; in the example above, you'd change it to 21. Then add beginning and ending tags like so:
BreakTag21=<BLAH NoBreakTag21=</BLAH>
Notes:
Leave out the closing GreaterThan sign on the BreakTagXX entry.
Make all of your entries UPPERCASE
RSS - you can now specify the date format for RSS feeds
In the [RSS] section of Friday.FAQ, you can add, for example:
RSSDateFormat=ddd, dd mmm yyyy hh:mm:ss
; this is the default format if there's no RSSDateFormat entry, actually
BugFix: When both Save and Done buttons are enabled in the editor, Save no longer triggers the RSS editing dialog. This is so that you can edit and save your work repeatedly and only click Done when you're ready to publish an RSS feed.
Hint: If you don't see both Save and Done buttons, check your Friday.FQA file, the [APP] section. Comment out this line or change the value to something other than 1:
OmitSaveButton=1
RSS - you should specify the "base url" for your site in the [RSS] section of Friday.FAQ as:
RSSHyperlinkBase=http://www.yourdomain.com/subfolder/
The name of the individual html files will be appended to this.
And you can add, for example,
RSSGMTOffset=GMT-5
The RSS GMT offset value is tacked onto the end of the publication date.
Set it to the appropriate value for your locale.
Further updates/improvements to RSS
Now you can add further values to the [RSS] section of the FQA file:
EditBeforeSave=NO|*
NO means DON'T bring up the edit dialog box before saving the RSS description
Automatically save it using "FIXED" pre-processing (see below)
Anything else means to bring up the box and let you edit the description.
RSSPreProcess=PLAIN|ASIS|FIXED|DESCRIPTION
By default or if you enter FIXED, Friday html-encodes the html it sends to
the text box for editing (ie, does the same to it as if you'd clicked FIX HTML)
ASIS puts the same text in the RSS description editor as was in your answer
It's up to you to edit it so that it's valid in an RSS reader
PLAIN has Friday strip all HTML leaving you with plain text.
DESCRIPTION has Friday use the FAQ's Description (meta) rather than answer text
NEW: RSS FEEDS
OK. A primitive form of RSS feed, but it's still pretty cool.
Add this whole new section to your FRIDAY.FQA file:
[RSS] ; Must be anything but blank or no RSS MakeRSS=YES ; These next entries need filename only; NO PATH ; All will be stored in the \FAQ folder except the rss feed file itself ; which goes in the \HTML folder ; defaults to rssheader.txt RSSHeaderFile= ; defaults to rsstail.txt RSSTailFile= ; defaults to rssfeed.xml RSSFeedFile=rssfeed.xml
Now when you click DONE after editing a FAQ or creating a new one, Friday gives you a description editor that initially contains the text of your FAQ. Edit it as you wish. The text here is what goes out on the newsfeed along with a link to this same page on your FAQ. Do NOT include HTML code in the description as it will probably cause the text to be unreadable for your users.
Friday creates an RSSFEED.XML file (name can be overridden above) by appending the header from RSSHeaderFile, the contents of a file that contains information about new and edited FAQs and finally the contents of RSSTailFile. You can edit the header and tail files if you like or provide your own. If none are provided, Friday creates them itself.
You upload the RSSFEED.XML file to your site or let Friday do it (be sure to add XML to the list of upload types in FRIDAY.FQA).
Then add this html someplace; visitors can click the link to subscribe to your new RSS feed:
<a type="application/rss+xml" href="feed.rss">Subscribe to RSS feed</a>
If you add this to the <head> section of your answer or main page template, some browsers like Opera and Firefox will display an RSS icon in the address bar or elsewhere; users can click this to subscribe to the feed.
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="rssfeed.xml" title="Your FEED title here">
IMPROVED: The meta-data editor now works correctly when you add metadata while creating a new FAQ. Previously you had to save the new FAQ then edit it again in order to add metadata.
NEW: Hold down the ALT key while you click Upload and Friday uploads just your main faq page (usually index.html).
NEW: Doubleclick the blank area of the FAQ editor to enter description and keywords for the individual FAQ. If an individual FAQ has associated description and/or keywords, these are used in place of the main description/keywords files when generating HTML for the FAQ page.
Fixed problem that prevented .KEY files from working correctly
Added ability to show a message box at end of some processes.
In the [App] section of FRIDAY.FQA
NotifyBeepOnly=YES
; to get just a beep; otherwise a messagebox appears
Control+Click a heading in Friday's main question list and Friday creates a URL that points to the named destination of the heading you clicked. In other words, you can now create URL links to headings/subheadings in your main index as well as to specific FAQs.
For example, control+click on the "About Friday and FAQs" section of this FAQ puts this text on the clipboard:
ABOUT FRIDAY and FAQs http://www.rdpslides.com/friday/tutorial/index.html#ABOUT_FRIDAY_and_FAQs
For this to work, Friday must be configured to create named destinations. The [App] section should include this line:
AutoLocations=1
You should probably include this as well so as to avoid spaces in the URL:
SpaceReplace=_
Fixed: firstanswer, lastanswer pointed to wrong answers
The firstanswer and lastanswer placeholders sometimes produced links to incorrect or non-existent HTML files. Both returned links to the first/last answer in numerical order (ie, order of creation) in the FAQ, rather than the first/last in the list on the main faq page. Both returned held answers when they should have ignored them. Now fixed.
Wait cursor etc when searching
When using global search, Friday now displays a "wait" cursor and disables the main and search forms.
Upload CANCEL button
When uploading, there's now a CANCEL button on the upload progress dialog box. Friday checks for a button click before uploading each file. It may still hang until timeout if there's a problem during the transfer of a file (ie, if the server stops responding or your internet connectivity is interrupted).
Forced upload of all files
Friday normally uploads only files that have changed since -- that have later file dates than -- the most recent upload. You can now click Ctrl + Upload to force Friday to upload all files in the HTML folder of your FAQ, not just new or newly changed files.
This is handy when
Edit external files from within Friday's editor
You can now call up files you've included in your Friday pages for editing without even leaving Friday's editor.
If you select the filename and press Ctrl+E to launch the file in the appropriate editing program.
When you do this, Friday first looks for the file along the path part of the selected text.
If it doesn't find it, it looks for it along the default paths you specify in FRIDAY.FQA (you can have a different path for each extension if you like):
[DefaultPaths] HTM=C:\MyFAQs\ThisFAQ\HTML\ PNG=C:\MyPictures\Photos\ TXT=C:\MyFAQs\ThisFAQ\FAQ\
and so on.
If no default paths are found in FRIDAY.FQA, Friday
If it can't find the file in any of those places, it checks Friday.INI (in the same directory as Friday.EXE)
It looks for this:
[Editors] TextExtensions=HTMLTXTASCCSS
TextExtensions is a concatenated (ie, all run-together) list of extensions that are expected to be ascii files. If the file's extension is on the list, Friday offers to create the file; if the user accepts, it creates the file and launches it in Notepad.
If no TextExtensions entry is found, it uses HTMLTXTASCCSS as the default
However, if Friday found the file during one of the tests above:
It checks a different section in Friday.INI
[Editors] GIF=full path to your preferred bitmap editor's exe file HTM=NOTEPAD.EXE HTML=NOTEPAD.EXE
If it finds the file's extension and an EXE listed, it launches the file in the specified application.
If it doesn't find the extension, it shellexecutes the file. This produces the same effect as doubleclicking the file's icon in Windows Explorer, so before taking the trouble to specify EXE files in the [Editors] section of Friday.INI, doubleclick the filetype you're interested in. If it opens in the app you want, you don't need to do anything else to make it open there from Friday.
Edit CSS files directly from within Friday
Choose Templates, Edit CSS to open the CSS file for the FAQ in Notepad or your choice of CSS editor.
For this to work, you must first tell Friday where to find the CSS file by adding an entry to the [FAQ] section of FRIDAY.FQA:
CSSFile="FULL path to file"
If there's no entry, you'll see a message box about it when you select the menu option
If the file specified doesn't exist, notepad offers to create it for you.
If you also add:
CSSEditor="full path to program exe file"
then instead of launching your css file in Notepad, Friday launches it in the program you specified.
It's a good idea to enclose both the paths to files in quotes, especially if there are spaces in the directory or file names.
You can specify a CSS editor for each individual FAQ or for all of your FAQs.
Add this to the FRIDAY.INI file in the same folder as FRIDAY.EXE to specify a CSS editor for all FAQs, or add the same lines to individual FRIDAY.FQA files if you want to use different editors for different FAQs.
[Editors] CSSEditor="full path to your favorite CSS editor or notepad or whatever"
Friday looks first for the CSSEditor line in FRIDAY.FQA for each FAQ and uses that when you edit CSS
If it doesn't find that, it looks in the FRIDAY.INI file
If it doesn't find it there, it launches the CSS file in Notepad
So FRIDAY.INI provides a default for all FAQs, the local FQA for each FAQ provides an optional override, and Notepad is our Faithful Fallback Friend For when All Else Fails.
Gallery.TXT file
The Gallery file is a handy place to store often-used snippets of information, html code or whatever other text you like.
Choose FAQ, Edit Gallery File from the main menu or press Ctrl+G while in Friday's Editor to open GALLERY.TXT in Notepad. If there's no GALLERY.TXT file, Friday offers to create it for you.
By default, GALLERY.TXT is stored in the \FAQ subfolder of your FAQ folder.
If you prefer to store the gallery file elsewhere (for example, so you can share a single file among several FAQs) make this change to the FRIDAY.FQA file for your FAQs:
[FAQ] GalleryFile=full_path_to_file
Show Held/Total pages on caption bar
Friday's main title bar now shows the total number of questions (entries) in your FAQ and how many of those are on Hold.
For example: [Q:144 H:9] means that there are 144 questions in your FAQ and 9 of them are on Hold.
TotalPages placeholder no longer includes held items
TotalPages now returns only the number of "live" items in your FAQ; it no longer includes held questions in the total pages count.
New keywords placeholder
When Friday sees the :keywords: placeholder in the answer template file, it checks to see if there's a *.KEY file whose name matches the .TXT file of the currently being processed FAQ.
If the file exists, Friday substitutes the contents of the file for the keywords placeholder.
Look next to the "Test Link" button in Friday's editor to see the name of the text file that contains the FAQ you're editing (just add the .KEY extension to the name you see there).
If you modify FRIDAY.INI (in the same folder as FRIDAY.EXE), you can simply type the name of the KEY file (e.g. FAQ00175.KEY), select it and press Ctrl+E to create and edit it from within Friday's editor.
[Editors] TextExtensions=HTMLTXTASCCSSKEY
You could even leave the name of the key file in your FAQ ready for editing at any time, but commented out so it doesn't appear in the HTML:
<!-- FAQ00175.KEY -->
Autodetect number entry in Search box
If you're in a hurry to find a specific FAQ by number, just type its number into the Search box. Friday now detects numbers and looks for the faq by number rather than searching for the number in the question text.
Spellcheck enabled
Friday can now pass text to Word (if it's installed) for spell checking. There are a few rough edges; some may be Windows and Word version dependent. Try it ... if it works, great. If not, let us know the specifics.
To enable spell checking add this to the [APP] section of your FRIDAY.FQA file:
EnableSpellCheck=1
Spell check defaults to US English, but you can set other language preferences by adding the following to the [APP] section of FRIDAY.FQA:
SpellCheckLanguage=xxxx
where xxx is one of the wdLanguageID constants:
This actually just passes the chosen value on to Word, which actually does the spell check.
Your copy of Word must have the requested language installed in order for this to work.
Friday now uses archive bit instead of file date on upload
Instead of comparing file date to last upload date, Friday now uploads any file with the archive bit set then sets file attributes to NONE once the file's uploaded.
This means that R/O and other properties will be reset as well.
It still touches the file to set the date to = last upload date
X-refs to subheads now produce links to named destination in index page
If you click a subhead in the XREF Friday now produces a link to the same-named subhead on the main index page. This assumes you have
[APP] AutoLocations=1
so that Friday generates named destinations for the subheads. Otherwise the links will fail.
File Picker to insert fully pathed filenames
Press Ctrl+P while in the editor to get a file dialog where you can choose a file name.
Friday adds the full path to the chosen file at the insertion point.
If you select text first, Friday replaces the selected text with the filename.
Can now select entire INSERT string to edit with Ctrl+E
If you use Friday's FILE INSERT feature, you can now select the entire line of code for the inserted text and press Ctrl+E to edit the inserted file.
Added last edit date to status report
When you Shift+Click the Question button, you get a simple status report that lists useful information about each question in your FAQ. Last Edit Date is now one of the items reported.
Automatic link formatting
If you select something like this in the editor:
Here's some text http://www.somedomain.com/somefile.htm
then press ALT+2, Friday converts it to
<a href="http://www.somedomain.com/somefile.htm">Here's some text</a>
which looks like this in a browser:
Handy. But that's just the default. You can control what gets added before/during/after the text you've selected by adding this to the FRIDAY.FQA file
[Links] ; text Friday should add before the URL AHREFBefore=<a href=" ; text Friday should add after the URL but before the link text AHREFMiddle=" target="_new"> ; text Friday should add after the link text AHREFAfter=</a>
This particular entry will cause the same selected text to convert to:
<a href="http://www.somedomain.com/somefile.htm" target="_new">Here's some text</a>
which looks like this in the browser:
It looks the same, but when clicked, it opens a new browser window.
You can get the same effect to apply to single selected lines of text or links by modifying your Custom Tags.
Strip leading zeros off faq number when searching
Previously when doing a find on FAQ number, entering "56" finds FAQ0056, FAQ0156, FAQ0256, etc.
Now it strips the leading zeros off the FAQ file names and only matches FAQ0056.
Copy FAQ to new location
Choose File, Copy FAQ to new location to create a copy of your FAQ in a different folder or on a different drive. This doesn't affect the current FAQ in any way, so it's useful when you want to
When you choose this option, Friday asks you whether to include the contents of your FAQ.
If you choose YES, then the FAQ, including all of your questions and answers, any generated HTML files ... the whole works, gets copied to the new folder.
If you choose NO, then the copy operation attempts to create a new version of your FAQ with all needed supporting files (templates, graphics, stylesheets, uploadable files, etc.) but it strips out your questions and answers and any generated HTML files.
Say YES if you want to back up a FAQ or move it to a new directory.
Say NO if you want to create a new FAQ that shares the current FAQ's appearance but that will receive new content.
Next you're asked for a path to the new FAQ. For now, you'll have to type it out.
Once you click OK, the copy operation starts. When copying is complete, Friday opens the new FAQ and displays its Settings dialog box. Be sure to check the information here carefully, particularly the upload settings. You'll probably want to set a new upload folder on your web site (if you don't, the new FAQ contents could wipe out the original FAQ on the site. Ooops.)
Improvement to Insert File routine
Friday now does the insert first, then does replacements. If inserted files contain placeholders, Friday now processes them.
Automatically place edit cursor after applying custom tag
You can now select where the text edit cursor will land after you apply a custom tag.
In either the Begin Tag or End Tag text box of the Custom Tags editing dialog box, type:
where you want the cursor to appear after the custom tag has been applied.
If that didn't suitably mystify you, perhaps this example will:
We have a Web Link custom tag like so:
Before: <a href="
After: "></a>
We type in a url like http://www.pptools.com and select it, then apply the tag and get:
<a href="http://www.pptools.com"></a>
Useful, but this leaves the cursor sitting at the end, after the . Now we have to move it back a few characters to add our link description text.
But if we make the After text look like this in the Custom Tags editor:
After: "></a>
we get the same text when we apply the tag, but now Friday puts the cursor where was so all you have to do is start typing the link description text.
Note:
%C% or %c% will work. It's not case-sensitive.
Upload password features
Friday encrypts your FTP upload password but you may still prefer not to let Friday store it
In the [APP] section of FRIDAY.FAQ, add the following line:
AskForPassword=YES
When you do this
If you're having upload problems and need to ensure that your password is being correctly decrypted by Friday, add this to the [APP] section of FRIDAY.FQA:
DebugFTP=YES
Friday then displays the decrypted password prior to uploading files so you can verify that it's been decrypted properly.
We recommend that you remove this setting once you're done using it.
New Search/Replace Features
Friday now allows you to do simple one-time Search/Replaces on the current file you're working on in its editor or across every answer in your FAQ.
It also has a new "table-driven" batch Search/Replace feature that performs multiple Search/Replaces on a single answer or on your whole FAQ with a single keystroke.
See Search and Replace for full information.
File Insert
You can insert any arbitrary text file into your templates or FAQ answers by reference:
<!--INSERT:c:\test\file.htm:INSERT-->
Friday replaces the whole Insert placeholder with the contents of the file specified.
If the file doesn't exist, Friday deletes the Insert placeholder.
This gives you a very powerful way to insert "boilerplate" text into any of your FAQs and still maintain it from a central text file.
For example, suppose you have a dozen different FAQs. Somewhere in each you want to include some legalese, but it might be in a different place in each FAQ. The legal text itself changes often, and you don't want to keep it updated in each FAQ for each change. So:
You put the legal text in c:\boilerplate\legalese\Legal.txt
Now wherever you want the text to appear in the FAQ, put this in the appropriate template:
<!--INSERT:c:\boilerplate\legalese\Legal.txt:INSERT-->
Whenever you update your FAQ, Friday will add the most up-to-date version, hot and steaming from the legal department. All you have to do is update Legal.txt then re-create HTML from your FAQ.
Note: INSERT must appear all in uppercase as shown.
SpaceReplace feature
When you use the AutoLocations feature in Friday to create automatic named locations for each of your questions/subheads, Friday includes any spaces in the question when it creates the name.
These don't cause any problems for internal links, but if you want to link into your FAQ from another page, the links to named locations may break when the locations have spaces.
To prevent that, add this to the [App] section of FRIDAY.FQA
SpaceReplace=x
where x is any character or characters you'd prefer to use in place of spaces.
You could use underscore _ or %20 or ... whatever you like, really.
Adding it right after AutoLocations=1 would be a good idea, since the two features are related.
Ctrl+T to apply current tag
Press Ctrl+T (T for Tag) to apply the tag currently in tags listbox (exactly as clicking the up arrow button does)
Automatic bulleted list formattiong
Friday can automatically format your lists as bulleted lists.
For example, type this:
Item one Item two Item three
Then select all three lines and press Ctrl+U (for UNordered List) and get
<ul>
<li>Item one</li>
<li>Item two</li>
<li>Item three</li>
</ul>
which looks like this on the web:
Change the <ul> and </ul> to <ol> and </ol> to get a numbered (ie, Ordered) list instead of a bulleted list.
You can use EditDate placeholder in questions as well as answers
When you use the EditDate placeholder in a question, Friday replaces EditDate with the last edit date of the question's answer file in the main FAQ list, but not in the answer text.
Here's another neat trick. In the [APP] section of FRIDAY.FQA, Friday maintains an item that looks like this:
LastDate=1/7/2003 9:24:47 PM
This is how it remembers when it last generated HTML. You generally shouldn't modify this.
But right below it, you can add this:
NEWTEXT=<strong>NEW!</strong>
When you do that, the text specified for NewText appears in place of the NEWTEXT placeholder in the main faq template IF the edit date of the question is later than the last date HTML was generated.
By editing LastDate, you can force the issue (but note that you'll have to edit it each time you generate HTML)
Link List
It can be useful to have a list of the links to answers in your FAQ. Friday will generate these automatically in two different formats.
Add the following lines to the [APP] section of FRIDAY.FQA:
; Turn the LinkList feature on MakeLinkList=1 ; Optionally, supply a file name for the link list file LinkFileName=linklistfilename
The next time you generate HTML from your FAQ, Friday will create two files, one a plain text file, the other in HTML format, both in the HTML folder for your FAQ. Both contain entries like:
Question <a href="http://www.link_to_answer/faq0001>http://etcetc</a>
Naturally, all content & site maintenance by
Friday The Automatic FAQ Maker