Divergences

Why Are There Changes?

This page lists intentional and unintentional changes from the original source made by Deka Jello in the process of updating these pages for reading in modern browsers. Some modifications were made with the intent of preserving the original as closely as possible. Typesetting is modified only when needed to be updated for modern standards. Non-presentation code was modified anywhere it does not comply with HTML5 standards. Spelling typos and other errors in the original work's text are modified only where failing to do so significantly impacts the readability, and will be called out on this page.

Known Issues (Unintentional Changes)

The original shows the first title at the top of the page with no margin. Swapping to use <!DOCTYPE html> appears to have caused this. Likely can be fixed with proper margin setting on the first H1 element.
Some possible intended double-breaks were eliminated by formatting. The original body text will need to be checked with an old browser simulator to determine where.
The tables on the image test page of the Riven Expedition have some kind of cell-internal padding added that makes them a bit taller than the original ones. This may also exist in the actual usage of them.
Chapter 12 of the Riven Expedition has a missing image link in it. The src attribute points to 'images/square.gif' but this image isn't on the image test page and the Wayback Machine doesn't appear to have ever archived this image. It is possible it once existed, but cannot confirm at this time.

Intentional Changes

Any section marked "Restoration Note" is newly-added and gives information on archived versions selected and shown in the restoration and other relevant notes from the process of updating this site.
All pages have a footer at the bottom noting that the formatting has been updated.
All pages now have a <!DOCTYPE html> declaration at the top, making them render in HTML5 mode.
All pages have a lang attribute added to the HTML element.
All attributes on tags were modified to have quoted values.
The <meta> tags for keywords were changed from using the http-equiv attribute to the name attribute.
rev attributes on <meta> tags were replaced with approprate rel values.
Mismatched <p> tags were made to match. While not strictly required to match in HTML5, it helped readability of the code when modifying other content for formatting.
All main body paragraph content was standardized to have the same presentational indent and font. It appears the original had some errors causing the indenting and formatting of body text to be inconsistent. This change was applied only in cases where it wasn't explicitly obvious that the original text was intended to look slightly different.
Double-space after sentences was updated to single space to match current style guides as of 2023.
Spaces at ends of lines of runs of text were removed.
A new CSS file called deka.css was added for formatting added sections such as resotaration notes and the footer.
All code was indented for readability. Some code was placed on a new line from its original open tag in the process of doing this. Generally, body text is hard-wrapped in source at 100 columns, with a tab considered to take up 4 spaces.
Added class="wayback" to links that were modified to go through the Wayback Machine.
Added class="defunct" to links that don't go through the Wayback Machine and that do not appear to be live.
Font specifications were preserved but were given web-safe fallbacks where they did not originally have them.
References to the invalid <tc> tag in stylesheets were replaced with the <td> tag.
Corrected "Lucidia Handwriting" to the correct "Lucida Handwriting".
Styling of centered notes was modified to remove the unworking float-based layout and to use a percentage width instead, along with max and min widths. A small amount of padding was also added so the text does not go all the way to the edge of its box.
Styling of the left-half of the torn Marker Switch clue was updated to make main body text float closer to the note and to make the note text look cutoff on the torn right side. Similar to the centered notes, padding was added, though slightly differently to make text flow off the right side.
Updated the right-half of the torn Marker Switch clue in chapter 7 of the Myst Journals to match the left side in chapter 3, but going the opposite way. This changes it from the original, in which it was formatted as a centered table and did not match the other half at all.
Updated the full Marker Switch clue in chapter 8 of the Myst Journals to match the torn fragments and heavily changed styling to match the two torn fragments.
Updated the text on both Marker Switch clues to fit together and to match the exact text of the note in-game.
Styling of <blockquote> was modified to add margins to the sides, tops, and bottoms, so it appears offset from text as it would have looked in older browsers.
Updated styling of <body> to have max width of 1000px and be centered on the page. Also removed its vertical margins.
Spurious closing </form> tag removed from chapter 4 of the Myst Journals.
Updated styling of tables used to show notes made by the main character. This includes removing obsolete tags and attributes and replacing them with CSS attributes attempting to simulate the intended effect.
Added separator characters to bottom nav menu on chapter 6 of the Myst Journals to match the rest of the chapters.
Top nav on chapter 8 of the Myst Journals was adjusted so the link to the previous page has the correct name of the chapter, "The Channelwood Age", instead of the incorrect "The Selentic Age".
Updated image centering in the Riven Expedition to use CSS instead of obsolete <center> tags.
Added alt text for several images in the Riven Expedition.
Navigation for the Riven Expedition was updated to use CSS instead of small for styling.
Added navigation links to the Riven Expedition's prologue chapter. Fixed nav links in general in the Riven Expedition, and added back links on the meta pages.
Updated styling in definition lists in the Riven Expedition to make them stand out a bit from body text and not just appear to be a series of indented text.
Updated styling of the note in chapter 10 of the Riven Expedition to more closely match previous notes. Also removed the manual breaks in favor of a CSS max-width.
Normalized all titles in the Riven Expedition to have a space after the colon; e.g. "The Riven Expedition: The Trap" as opposed to "The Riven Expedition:The Trap.
Catherine's note in chapter 17 of the Riven Expedition was modified to use a single <p> tag with <br> tags for spacing as opposed to multiple <p> tags in a single <div>. This was done to match the other note in the Riven Expedition.
Added a brief info blurb to the index page of the Riven Expedition that mirrors the one on the Myst Journals and links back to the main title page.
Changed text at bottom of the Myst 3: Exile explanation page to link back to the main index page.
Merged common styles across the site into a new stylesheet called common.css. Note: deka.css was called common.css in prior versions of the site; its name was changed to better reflect the contained styles as being related only to added pages and content.
Some versions of the site on the Wayback Machine appear to have references to a chapter selector drop-down, with styling of centered text and font family Verdana. This doesn't appear to exist, so styling for it was removed from CSS.
Besides added content, link colors are reverted to the user-agent default.
Body text font on main index meta pages and on the main index itself was changed to match the Bookman Old (with fallbacks) font family used by the rest of the site.
List items in the Myst Journals section were updated to match styling in the main index pages.
Styles from titlepg.css and myst.css were combined into just myst.css, and titlepg.css was removed.

Main Title Page

Restored and updated for modern rendering by Deka Jello. See the divergences page for known differences and alterations.