Path: usenet.cise.ufl.edu!huron.eel.ufl.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!uky.edu!atl-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!nntp.abs.net!cyclone.i1.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!news.neta.com!not-for-mail From: jari.aalto@poboxes.com (Jari Aalto+mail.perl) Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.misc Subject: ANNOUNCE: v1.138 t2html.pl Text to html conversion script, Perl 5.004+ Followup-To: comp.lang.perl.misc Date: 26 Nov 1998 03:36:47 GMT Organization: University of Tampere Lines: 124 Approved: merlyn@stonehenge.com (comp.lang.perl.announce) Message-ID: <73iicf$ego$1@news.neta.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: gadget.cscaper.com X-Trace: news.neta.com 912051407 14872 206.67.186.3 (26 Nov 1998 03:36:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@neta.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 26 Nov 1998 03:36:47 GMT X-Disclaimer: The "Approved" header verifies header information for article transmission and does not imply approval of content. Xref: usenet.cise.ufl.edu comp.lang.perl.announce:174 comp.lang.perl.misc:50591 Download ANNOUNCE: v1.138 t2html.pl Text to html conversion script, Perl 5.004+ Home page: ftp://cs.uta.fi/pub/ssjaaa/t2html.html Available by Email: To: Subject: send t2html.pl Perl language interpreter pointers at (Win32/Unix etc.) http://language.perl.com/info/software.html What's new Faster and Cleaner HTML code generation. The HTML markup code was completely rewritten and the --html-column-color option was made obsolete. Colours are now coming from CSS. This version now generates HTML 2x faster, eg. my 600k Procmail faq PAGE now takes 33secs on HP-UX, where it used to take 70secs. HTML 4.0 CSS now supported The generated html contains default HTML 4.x CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) information which you can easily modify. The new CSS takes advantage of some nice MSIE "hoovering" of links to make HTML pages more responsive. You can import your own CSS or Jave code with --java-file switch. Description Writing text documents is different from writing messages to Usenet or to your fellow workers. There already exists several tools to convert email messages into html, like MHonArc, Email hyper archiver, but for regular text documents, like for memos, FAQs, help pages and for other papers, I didn't find any suitable html converter couple of years back. I wanted a simple html tool which would read text documents I maintained: several Emacs guides, procmail tips page, program documentations, my home pages etc. and convert them into html. And here you will find the specification how to format your text documents for *t2html* perl script. Program has html Link validation commands (uses LWP) How it works Text must be placed at certain column positions to enable proper html formatting. The style used is called Technical format (TF). You're looking at TF format right now. TF specification is included in the t2html.pl --help. You need nothing else but a text editor where the current column number is displayed or editor that advances your TAB by 4 spaces. That's it. Comparision to existing txt2html.pl The t2html.pl is different that text2html.pl in following respect: [t2html] o Requires that you really format your text into TF layout like this message. This ensures that all your documents look similar. o was designed to meet requirements of formally written text, such as official MEMOs, FAQs, drafs, lectures... o Generates coloured html pages: --html-colour o Generates Framed html pages: --html-frame [text2html] o txt2html.pl uses normal text file and requires no previous markup. Emacs and minor mode for helping to write TF If word `Emacs' means anything to you, then you can use additional Emacs minor mode (package TinyTf.el) that I wrote especially to help writing documents, formatting paragraphs, auto filling bullets and keeping TOC up to date. The description of the Emacs package is added to the page. If you don't know about Emacs but got interested, then see these for more Emacs info: ftp://cs.uta.fi/pub/ssjaaa/elisp.html ftp://cs.uta.fi/pub/ssjaaa/ema-tiny.html ftp://cs.uta.fi/pub/ssjaaa/tiny-tools.tar.gz (contains tinytf.el) Todo HTML Split feature This would be nice, but it's hard to implement, especially with frame support. Don't expect it appear in near future. Configuration file There are dozen of options and it would be nice if the files you convert can be specified from Perl configuration file. Better linkin capabilities Currently the linking of separate documents must be instructed by hand with separate options: --button-next --button-previous --button-top (usually index.html) End