I am quite familiar with editing of html pages but wp based blogs are not my cup of tea. I however do like the comments feature of wp as well as their capability of auto updates etc with some plug-ins. So is there any way to encapsulate wp within html so that I can harness energy of wp but still be able to edit the page as html? thx in advance for any replies.
Wordpress pages are rendered in html WP is written in php. PHP is what is doing the server side backend stuff but it still renders the page in html and CSS. All of your h1 and p tags are html. I've never used WP but I would expect that it is using an external stylesheet. Look for the classes or IDs in the html pages of the site and find where they are defined in the stylesheet. Also you will probably need to get on the WP website and look at any forums and documentation. I use Blogengine and it is separated into different sections by themes so there are separate master pages and stylesheets in each theme. It's an organizational thing more than a architectural thing. In any event you can change the style and look of WP in the html and css. As for what the php web applacation does you have to work with the php programing.
Nope, Not possible, However, you can create a html form for the comment with the help of PHP and MySQL you can store the comments and show up in your webpage. Think about the guestbook we had earlier days.
You can open WP template in your favorite html editor and edit. Its easy. If you know a little programming then simple PHP-code will be easy for you.