Re: HTML question (off topic)

From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Sun Jan 21 2001 - 09:35:09 MST


Artillo5@cs.com wrote:

> I would have to agree with John Colvin.... Word files make for an AWFUL HTML
> conversion. Frontpage is excellent though. The problem is like he said, it's
> a matter of compatability especially with regards to Cascading Style Sheets
> (the font and layout info Word puts in automatically). HTML generated from MS
> Office programs is very messy and is usually about 10x as complicated as it
> has to be. Stick with a text-based editor (Even Notepad will work well) or a
> dedicated webpage program like Frontpage.

Frontpage sucks. Moreover, most all Frontpage sites look like Frontpage
sites. They just have this distintive look where at a glance you know
'this was done with Frontpage'. There's even a Microsoft TV commercial
with this guy running a fish business, there's a quick scene of him
working on his web site, and even it looks like Frontpage. I'd suggest
Homesite to begin with, then maybe Dreamweaver.

As someone who does lots of Word->html conversions, there's a way around
the MS messiness. What I do is: 1) Use Word2000 to convert doc to html
2) Use HTML Tidy with the option specifically designed to remove MS Word
generated html junk. 3) I have a shell script with about 110 single-line
perl expressions which further filters the junk. I'm left with a
relatively clean html output, ready to polish off manually.

        -Mike

-- 
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Michael Wiik
Principal
Messagenet Communications Research
Washington DC Area Internet and WWW Consultants
http://messagenet.com
mwiik@messagenet.com
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