AscToHTM Documentation for AscToHTM conversion utility
This documentation can be downloaded in .zip format.

1 Introduction

AscToHTM is an ASCII to HTML conversion tool. It has, of course, been used to generate the HTML version of this document from the text file A2HDOCO.TXT (see 6.1 for more details). The HTML version of this document is presented "as is". That is, no post-production of the HTML has occurred. This should give you a flavour of what AscToHTM is capable of.

AscToHTM is made available for download via the Internet from the download page.

1.1 AscToHTM's design objectives

AscToHTM is designed to analyse a document to determine its structure and layout. This analysis allows AscToHTM to decide how best to mark up the HTML so as to accurately represent the author's original meaning.

It also helps AscToHTM to reduce errors by allowing it to spot anomalies in the document source.

AscToHTM tries to create HTML that can be easily read and modified in an editor. This is useful if corrections are necessary, or further development (such as the insertion of pictures) is required.

For example AscToHTM

  1. produces short (<80 character) output lines

  2. attempts to indent the HTML to match the output indentation.

  3. adds comments to the HTML to indicate include files etc.

  4. uses <BLOCKQUOTE> tags for indentation, rather than placing all the text in <TABLE>...</TABLE> tags.

Inevitably users have supply additional information to tell AscToHTM where its analysis has gone wrong and to add additional information such as a document title etc. AscToHTM reads this information in from a "policy" file.

To help users formulate and modify this policy, AscToHTM creates an output policy file each time it runs. Users can simply edit this file and feed it back into the conversion process.

1.2 Expected uses of AscToHTM

Large amounts of unconverted text exist. As people plan to put this information on the Web, conversion to HTML will become necessary.

This can be a tedious and time-consuming task. AscToHTM will do much of the work for you.

AscToHTM will be priced to be worth an hour of two of your time. Check registration page for details.

This means that the "pay back" time is negligible (we only mention this in case you have bean-counters to convince :)

The HTML created by AscToHTM will not be as pretty or as clever as that generated from scratch by a full blown HTML editor. In particular in its current form it has little support for graphics.

But...

It'll be easier to write, edit and spell-check.

Besides, there's arguably too much graphics on the web, and you can communicate a vast amount of information via text. A picture may be worth a thousand words... but not on the web... and not over a slow modem line.


1.3 Other uses of AscToHTM

AscToHTM was never intended to handle Word documents. We fully expect HTML export and import filters to appear (they have in Word '97), and we would advise anyone whose master document is in Word to search out these filters and give them a try.

That said... a lot of people seem unhappy with what's already available, and AscToHTM does a reasonable job if you save the file as text with line breaks, though obviously tables and figures will get lost.

The main problem is that Word produces lousy looking text. This is one area where AscToHTM does better than "garbage in, garbage out"

(This is a bit cheeky, but possibly worth a try).

Use AscToHTM to convert text to HTML, then import this into your word processing package. We haven't tried this, but we're guessing that this will give better results than importing from text.

That's because AscToHTM's analysis engine is smarter.

Use AscToHTM to convert text to HTML, then print the file from within Netscape or whatever. The result is a much nicer looking document with fonts'n'stuff.



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© 1997 John A. Fotheringham