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About Formatting Text

In addition to files prepared using word processing and page layout applications, it is also possible to edit simple documents directly using
 
add document
or
 
supersede
. These can be:

Using the formatted text editor

Ensembling uses TinyMCE in the "formatted text" tab to provide direct editing of HTML.
The format in formatted text is saved in the file using HTML markup. It is not quite an HTML page as would be displayed by a browser because it does not have header and trailer information that a complete HTML file would have. However, this is to our advantage because it means these HTML fragments can be embedded in larger web pages. Therefore the editor can be used to draft things like news items for review to be placed elsewhere later on. The editor panel is, of course, an example itself of the fragment of HTML embedded within another web page.
The editor uses buttons and pull down menus in much the same way as other formatting text applications. Select the text to which formatting is to be applied and press the relevant button to apply it. For example, to embolden text, select it and press the Bold button. You can also use familiar keyboard shortcuts:
Other key combinations continue operate your browser. In particular, many browsers use CTRL+W (Clover+W) to close the browser window, which is definitely not what you want to do here.
As the window is quite small it is useful to know that you can press the 'large' button so that the editor occupies the whole window, and the little up arrow after all the other buttons to remove even the buttons.

Including pictures in formatted text

Formatted text is a fragment of HTML. Like all HTML, images are included by reference to another file or internet location. Therefore, when you press the editor button to insert (or replace) an image you are asked to supply a URL. This may be:

Referencing pictures on another website

For images on another website which will continue to be referenced on that website, you can just past the image's URL. However, this will rarely be the address of a web page as shown in the browser's address bar as, like the page we are preparing, the image will be an embedded in that page by reference, not the page itself. You can, however, obtain the URL of a picture you can see in a web page: most browsers allow you to right click over the picture and choose Properties. You can then copy the URL from the Properties panel. Some browsers let you copy the URL directly: for example in Firefox you can right click over the picture and choose 'Copy Image Location'.

Using your own pictures

The more likely requirement, however, is for you to be embedding your own images which you have as files on your own computer, or already uploaded to Ensembling.
To use such pictures, it is helpful to organise them so that they are in the same Ensembling folder as the formatted text (or a child folder, if you want to collect all the images together), though you don't have to upload all the images in advance (see below). This organisation is helpful because you can then download the HTML file and all the related images in one go using download all. Furthermore, the HTML downloaded will then contain relative image references so that the HTML will then refer to the downloaded images and if included on another website, will continue to reference the images relative to the page concerned.
To include your own pictures click the 'Image' button and then 'Browse Server'. This opens a new window on the parent folder of the Ensembling document you are working on (which is where you will have stored your images if organised as described above). You can then navigate to the image you want and press the
 
use image
button. This insert the desired URL in the editor's URL field.
(You can also use the link obtained from 'Properties' on the right-button menu in your browser as above, but not the URL in the address bar for the same reason, that the page is not the image alone but a larger page in which the image is just one element).

Getting formatted text out

You can, of course, copy and paste the formatted text from the formatted text tab editor pane in
 
supersede
. How and whether the formatting is reproduced where it is pasted depends on the application it is pasted into.
However, when there are pictures, this will include verbatim links to them in Ensembling. You are only logged into Ensembling through your browser and only your browser can display them. Therefore you will not see any pictures if you just copy and paste.
It is better, therefore, to download the file. This substitutes links to Ensembling with relative links (see above). Providing you also download the pictures themselves into folders with the same structure as those in Ensembling the pictures show display correctly.
In particular, if you have organised the pictures and text in the same folder as explained above, then
 
download all
will fetch all the related content in the correct relative locations for the links to images in the HTML formatted text to be correct.
formating plain text html fragment editor