Re: conversion programs from ascii to HTML

Walt Houser (houser@cpcug.org)
Wed, 2 Aug 1995 17:59:13 -0400

I had the same problem Stu had. IMHO I would just leave the files in
text/plain and hope that your visitors don't use MOSAIC "Final Beta" which
no longer views text/plain as an internal MIME type. [...soap] We put up
over 23,000 administrative decisions and would have been forever converting
them to html. (See http://www.va.gov/) But I dont pay your salary. :-)

MS IA is nice for converting Word docs, but it doesn't give me the control I
prefer over the tagging of headers and the like. For example, the folks I
work with dont use the doc info/summary fields consistantly, so I still have
to edit the <head> and <title> and <metaxxxx> fields manually.
Ocassionally, a document will turn to mush in the conversion, so I suggest
having some alternatives. Often it easy to save the Word doc as text and
edit it manually.

Another option is to use HTML Assistant to insert <P> tags in your
paragraphs. Beware that HTML Asst (like MS Notepad) isnt good at files over
32K. In that case I use MS WRITE. HTML Asst is at:

http://fox.nstn.ca/~harawitz/htmlpro1.html or
http://cs.dal.ca/ftp/htmlasst/htmlafaq.html

BTW I dont use shareware MS IA for tables; it pads with spaces. Instead,
try HoTMetal from SoftQuad whcih converts Word tables to html tables. SQ
makes is hard to write bad html. Visit them at:

http://www.sq.com/

ANT_HTML is a macro based Word 6 html converter/editor. ANT gives you a
better feel for html than MS IA. But it can get hung up in a table. The
public version can also mistag bold-italics and other combinations. The
demo version is available at

ftp.einet.net/einet/pc (.zip file format) and
ftp.einet.net/einet/mac/html-aids/ (.sit file format)

Another Word convertor/editor is Chinese Univ HTML, available for free from
Anton Lam <Anton@csc.msmail.cuhk.hk>. Georgia Tech also has a macro
converter. Both have their ideosyncrasies like ANT_HTML. If you encounter
problems with one, use another.

BTW Word Perfect WPIP is at ftp.wordperfect.com/pub/wpapps/intpub

All this info is posted at NCSA I believe. (without the editorial
commentary).

At 01:46 PM 8/2/95 -0700, Stuart Harris wrote:
>Lori wrote.....
>>
>> I am trying to find a good conversion program for ascii files to HTML
>> documents. We are in the process of converting many, many, many ascii
>> files to HTML and it would be much easier if there was a program that would
>> do it automatically.
>>
>> Any suggestions??
>
>This is a maximally confusing question, since of course HTML documents are
>ASCII documents.
>
>If you mean "how can I translate whatever format cues exist in the originals
>to HTML tags?" then one suggestion -- if you're a Windows type -- is to import
>your documents into Word for Windows 6.0x and convert them using Microsoft
>Internet Assistant. IA is free, from
>ftp.microsoft.com/deskapps/word/winword-public/ia.
>
>It'll do its best to translate formatting, including some tables & forms. Just
>don't try installing radio button!
>
>There are similar translators for Word Perfect et al.
>
>Hope that's a help,
>Stu Harris
>
>
>
Walter Houser 202-565-9572
houser@cpcug.org 301-427-3792
Have the Courage to Be Imperfect - R. Driekurs