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Subject:Re: single source print+html From:"Roz Ault, Information Technology, X 377" <AULT -at- FAXON -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 5 Oct 1998 10:14:35 -0400
Ned:
Re your search for a single-source print / html authoring tool:
If you know basic html, I suggest you look at the shareware
application rtftohtml, available at http://www.sunpack.com/RTF/
NOTE: The URL is case sensitive.
This program converts any rtf file to html -- just drag and drop.
It produces much cleaner html than Word itself. The best way to
use it is with documents where you have previously set up the
styles to accord with the basic html heading and list styles. You
can, however, customize it to map your own style names if you
don't want to go through the process of renaming styles.
A few caveats about rtftohtml --
1 - Its interface is geeky and the documentation opaque. It helps
if you can think like a programmer when you first start to use
it. OTOH, I have gotten good response from the programmer, Chris
Hector, to email inquiries. And once you do figure out how to set
it up for your own requirements, it just does its thing
automatically. Just drag your rtf file on top of the program
icon, and a few seconds later you have your html output.
2 - Its output usually requires some tweaking in an html
authoring program (I use BBEdit on the Mac and HomeSite on the
PC). But I think this is true of any conversion program, and rtf
requires less than most.
3 - It extracts any pictures in the text as .pict files on the Mac
or .wmf or .bmp on Windows. In the html file, it does
automatically insert an IMG reference to a .gif file, but you
have to convert the extracted files to .gif files yourself. The
documentation includes references to programs that do this for
you. On the Mac (which I prefer for graphics) it only takes a few
seconds to drag and drop the pict files on clip2gif (freeware).
On the plus side, it runs on any platform, is fast, solid,
customizable in many ways, does tables and frames, supports
cascading style sheets, and automatically generates tables of
contents, indexes, footnotes. Shareware price is $39; evaluation
version is free.
