[AscToHTM] Documentation for AscToHTM conversion utility
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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

        o Intelligent analysis.

          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 accurrately represent the
          author's original meaning.

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

        o Human-readable HTML

          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

            a. produces short (<80 character) output lines

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

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

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

        o Simple user input

          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

        o Migration of "legacy" text to HTML.

          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 :)

        o Facilitate mastering of HTML pages in ASCII

          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...

          There's arguable 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
          modem line.

1.3 Unexpected uses of AscToHTM

        o Convert Word documents

          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... 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"

        o Pre-process text for import to Word.

          (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.

        o Pre-process text for printing

          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