RADpage/heitml Frequently Asked Questions

Here is our list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). This FAQ is still not complete and well-organized. If you do not find the answer to your question here, don't hesitate to contact us.

Table of Contents

1. Licensing Questions
2. Editor Questions
3. Installation
4. UNIX-Installation
5. Windows-Installation
6. Language / Usage
7. Documentation
8. Platforms

Licensing Questions

Q: What versions of heitml can I use for free as a non-commercial entity or private person ?
A: You can use the UNIX/Linux versions of RADpage on your desktop machine or on your server. Even if you do not use Linux directly, you can remotely install the CGI version of RADpage on your UNIX powered virtual web server.

Q: Is there a way to get rid of the non-commercial message that appears at the end of each page ?
A: The message disappears as soon as you enter a valid license key that you can get from H.E.I. For non-commercial use we send you a license key for free after registration. For commercial use you will receive the key after payment.

Q: Is there a developer version that uses IIS/PWS or Apache ?
A: Using the serial key of the developer version you can use any version of heitml on a local network using the computer name without a domain name. This is ok as long as you use the version for development only.

Editor Questions

Q: How can I edit a text paragraph
A: A Double click on a text paragraph makes a text block editable (Windows IE). You can edit it in WYSIWYG mode inside the main window and in HTML mode inside the editor window. You can also use the "Edit Page" item in the edit menu of RADpage to edit the complete page body. Note that all dynamic interactive components stop working and are replaced by small blue handles inside the edited part of the page.

Note that Netscape as well as IE on other platforms but Windows do not support WYSIWYG editing. With these browsers click on a blue handle and the on the "Content" button to edit the HTML source.

Q: Handles disturb the appearance of my page !
A: Move the "Page Mode" Selector to "Plain" (IE on Windows only). All handles will disappear. You still can select a component (or insert something at the begin or end of a component) by clicking on the component itself. You can also use the arrows in the RADpage menu to navigate to the first, previous, next, or last component.

Q: My changes disappear after closing RADpage.
A: As with any other editor you need to save your work (note this was different in previous versions of RADpage). RADpage does however not complain about open files when closed but just keeps the files open for the next RADpage session. So you can just restart RADpage and your changes will appear again. Then use "Save" in the file menu to make your changes permanent.

Q: Drag Drop of components does not work for me, what is the problem ?
A: Drag Drop is not enabled by default on Netscape, because it needs a higher bandwidth. If you have a nice connection to your server (or work locally), you can switch on drag/drop in the option menu of RADpage. Note that drag/drop is not yet available for MAC IE and for Netscape 6 and Netscape 7.

Q: Should I continue to use my favorite HTML editor to create the layout ?
A: Definitively. RADpage is specialized in dynamic pages. It is very good in adding dynamic features to your pages. Usual HTML editors on the other hand are specialized in the layout editing. So it makes perfect sense to use RADpage and another HTML editor in cooperation.

Q: I can not create a new web site using RADpage.
A: Creating a new web site is usually the task of an ISP or system administrator. The New Web Site menu of RADpage just gives help for the system administrator how to do this. If you are running the developer version of RADpage there is a menu item in the small RADpage window to create a new site.

Q: How can I use RADpage in cooperation with another HTML editor ?
A: The obvious solution is to import HTML pages using the import function of RADpage. This is fine for the inital page layout. Afterwards you can edit the heitml pages that you created with RADpage (the .hei files) directly with your HTML editor, provided that you told RADpage what kind of HTML editor you are using. Upon creation or import of a page, you can select various kinds of HTML editors to use. There is more information in the RADpage help menu, in the tutorial and in the manual.

Q: Will RADpage restructure my HTML source code ?
A: No. RADpage is very conservative when changing the source code. Adding (or editing) a component to a page usually just adds (or edits) a single tag to your page. RADpage does not change anything else in your source code. Importing a page into RADpage just adds several new declarations into the header and keeps the rest of your page in tact.

Q: Can I edit heitml pages created with RADpage with a text editor ?
A: Yes, you can easily edit heitml pages with a text editor. Each RADpage component directly corresponds to a tag contained in the page. There are no magic comments in the pages so you can switch between RADpage and the text editor at any time you like.

Q: I frequently get an out of memory message from my web browser
A: The problem appears in IE 4 and IE 5.0. It seems to be fixed in IE 5.01 and newer.

Q: Error Message: This browser cannot open more Windows
A: This happens on some systems when working heavily with Netscape for some hours. Restarting the browser helps.

Installation Questions

Q: I get a very stupid and meaningless error message like "a transient error occurred" or "the database is currently offline".
A: These error messages are designed to be meaningless to not reveal internal information to a stranger connecting from outside to your computer. The problem is that heitml sees you as a stranger and does not reveal full error information. This can have the following reasons

• Your browser runs on a different machine. Then add this machines IP address to the debugip parameter in the config file.
• Your browser uses a proxy server. Switch off proxy servers in your browser. Later you can configure the browser not to use a proxy server just for your site.
• The debugip parameter in the config file has been changed, it must contain 127.0.0.1;localhost to give error information to browsers running on your machine.

Q: I get error messages during installation that the databases could not be set up.
A: This is not nice, but not a principle problem. RADpage was still installed correctly, but it could not create and install the sample database. Please

• Check if the database (ODBC drivers on Windows, various systems on UNIX is installed and if you use the right version of RADpage for that database system).
• For UNIX: check if the database system can be started. If it does not start, you have a problem with the database. Note that RADpage installation tries to start the database automatically. On some systems you get a warning that the database can not be started, because it is running already, which is of no concern.It is not required to start the database before installing RADpage. On some systems (Suse 6.x) it is even required that the database is down before installing heitml.
• Check if the database works stand alone and use another program (like Access, Excel, MSQRY32 on Windows or mysql, psql on UNIX) to connect to the database.
• If you fixed any problems in the previous steps, please deinstall and then reinstall RADpage
• Create (or reuse an existing) database for heitml manually and enter the corresponding parameters dbname, dbhost, user, and passwd in httpd.conf

Q: The documentation is dispayed very nicely, but when I try to start RADpage a small window starts flashing.
A: This has been removed in version 2.03, but was correct for previous versions. On the first start of RADpage various files are precompiled which takes a while. The window should flash about 10-20 times.

UNIX Installation Questions

Q: I can not install the heitml Linux .rpm  or .deb file because of a version conflict.
A: .rpm and .deb files are made for a very specific Linux distributions. They are probably not compatible with other versions, so an rpm for RedHat 6.0 probably will not work with 6.1. Please also be careful not to confuse SuSE and RedHat rpms. Installing a new version of the database system or the Web server also may cause problems.

We try to build rpm files for the most often used distributions, however, if there is no rpm available you can always resort to the heitml generic version. It works with various Web server versions and with many data base versions, since database and Web server drivers are contained in source code.

Q: Nothing happens after installation of heitml on UNIX. What is wrong ?
A: The heitml installation does not effect the home page of your server and it does not install any programs you could start from the command line. Please point your browser to http://yourserver/heitml2.1/.

Q: I get an "object contains not data" error message
A: This can have many causes, it can be a bug in heitml or more likely you compiled heitml with the wrong version of a database system or Web server. Please contact H.E.I. support.

Q: My browser displays the .hei files literally as program text.
A: This can have multiple causes

• heitml is not installed at all
• heitml configuration commands are not in httpd.conf

• you indeed run the server daemon httpd that you just compiled / installed
• you really restarted you server daemon (graceful does not work here)
• the heitml configuration directives are in the right config file.

Q: After installation on UNIX everything worked fine, however after rebooting it can no longer connect to the database.
A: UNIX databases need to be started. RADpage installation starts the database automatically, but after a reboot you need restart the database. Please consult the database on UNIX distribution manual on how to start the database automatically on bootup.

Q: Database can not be connected error message
A:

• Double-check that you use the right version of heitml for your database system.
• Try to connect to the database with another program like psql etc. If you can not this is not a heitml problem.
• Find out under what user id your Web server runs under (user directive in httpd.conf). Login as this users and try to connect to the database. If this is not working configure your database accordingly.
• Double-check the dbname, dbhost, user, and passwd directives in httpd.conf and make sure to use exactly these parameters when trying to connect to the database manually.

Windows Installation Questions

Q: Does heitml work with Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0 on Windows 2000 and IIS 5.1 on Windows XP Professional ?
A: Yes (IIS).

Q: Does the heitml setup program automatically configure heitml with Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 on Windows NT 4.0 Server and Personal Web Server (PWS) 4.0 on Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 Workstation ?
A: Yes (IIS, PWS).

Q: I have Windows Me or Windows XP Home and cannot find Personal Web Sever (PWS). What should I do ?
A: Microsoft does not support Personal Web Server (PWS) on Windows Me and Windows XP Home. Try any other supported Web Server software.

Q: I have no ODBC drivers at hand. Where do I get them?
A: Read here.

Q: The browser asks me whether to go online, if I try to request a page on http://localhost. If I tell him to stay offline, nothing happens.
A: You are probably using Microsoft Internet Explorer. In the 'Internet Options' page of Internet Explorer, choose the 'Connection' tab and disable the option which (always) dials a connection. Afterwards, deselect 'Working Offline' from Internet Explorer's File menu and request the page on http://localhost again.

Q: I installed heitml and the mail tag does not work.
A: After installing heitml, you have to do some additional configuration to make the mail tag work. On Windows 95/98/Me/XP Home, where heitml is configured to use MAPI (Messaging Application Programming Interface) by default, you have to install Microsoft Exchange, setup a profile and install the Internet Mail service. Afterwards, set the heitml configuration option mailprofile to the name of the profile. Note that MAPI won't work with Windows NT services. On Windows NT/2000/XP Professional, where heitml is configured to use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) by default, you have to set the heitml configuration option mailservice to the hostname of your SMTP server and the configuration option mailprofile to the sender's email address.

Language / Usage

Q: heitml shows a syntax error message
A: If you are using RADpage for editing, try the "Undo" function in the edit menu. Otherwise correct the error using a text editor. If the error message seems to be illogical or not understandable, please have a close look at the syntax highlighting provided by heitml. Sometimes this reveals that there is a syntax error some lines before that in fact caused heitml to interpret the source not as intended.

Q: heitml shows half a page without any error message.
A: In most cases there is an error message, but it is not displayed by the bowser. You can

• Use the "View Last Error" function in the edit menu of RADpage.
• Use the "view source code" function of your browser and look for any hidden error messages at the end of the page.
• Look into the error log file of the web server

Q: Can I customize heitml error messages or does heitml provide exception handling in case of an error?
A: See the heitml configuration option heitmlerrorrc on how to handle syntax errors and the error handling library in lib/errorhandler.hei on how to handle run-time errors. Note that the error handling library is not officially supported yet.

Documentation

Q: Is heitml documentation available in other languages than English?
A: No.

Platforms

Q: Does the heitml PostgreSQL driver support large texts?
A: No.

Q: Are you planning to support BeOS?
A: Not with heitml 2.0.

Q: Does heitml support two-byte character sets like Japanese, Korean or Chinese?
A: No, but Internationalization (concept i18n) is planned for heitml 3.