Subject: Re: Man Page-> HTML tool and HTML WYSIWYG editor
From: [email-masked] (Chris J. Hector)
Date: 8 Jul 93 15:00:49 CDT
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Iain O'Cain) writes:
>In article <1993Jul6.200514.5101> [email-masked] (Terje Norderhaug) writes:
>>
>>Concerning a WYSIWYG editor for HTML:
>>Framemaker and Word can be used as a WYSIWYG editor for HTML, by
>>using a program that convert their files into a HTML document.
>>Others on this newsgroup have such programs. Framemaker has
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
>So I keep reading, but nobody has said where to get them.
>
>- Iain
>-- 
>Iain O'Cain, [email-masked], [email-masked]; (313) 973-7528

So it is about time for a summary!
Here is what I have found (from the many postings and a few email responses.)

There are two man page to HTML converters. The first is written in
c-shell/gawk and came from Bennet Yee ([email-masked]) at:
The sources should be accessible through my FTP page
<a href="http://c.gp.cs.cmu.edu:5103/usr/bsy/www/ftp.html#http_srv">here</a>,
For a quick demo, try
<a href="http://c.gp.cs.cmu.edu:5103/prog/man?">this</a>.

The second is written in perl and comes from the Plexus 2.2 package which
is available at:
http://www.bsdi.com/server/doc/plexus.html
or ftp
austin.bsdi.com in pub/Plexus-2.2-beta.tar.Z

I have tried the converter from Bennet Yee and it works well for me. 
(no rhyme intended.)

As for WYSIWYG editors, there is one: tkWWW - a combination viewer and
HTML editor. I was able to get this working on my system in about an
hour and it works fine. It is based on Tcl/Wish so you will need them
as well.
tkWWW-0.8.tar.z is available via anonymous ftp from info.cern.ch
in pub/www/src.

There were also several suggestions of using text with macros (m4)
or Framemaker and Word. I have found a README file for a package 
(but have not tried it) to use Framemaker as an editor/viewer. The
README is at info.cern.ch in pub/www/src/www_and_frame-README.

As for Word, I tried the simple RTF to HTML converter provided by
Chuck Shotton (The source code is available for anon FTP from:
oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu in /public/unix/WWW/rtf2html.tar)

This inspired me to take a crack at it myself. I borrowed code from
Paul DuBois     [email-masked]
who wrote a series of RTF2xxx translators from a single RTF reader.
Using this reader I have built a RTF2HTML converter that:

1) Fully parses the RTF (it grabs all of the text and ignores much of the
			formatting properties.)
2) Preserves Bold and Italic properties of text.
3) Translates heading [1-5] styles to <h1-5> references
4) Captures PICTures and writes them to a separate file so that they
   may be translated using (picttoppm|ppmtogif) to a gif file. A link
   is made in the original document so that the picture may be viewed
   by clicking on a reference.

I will make my code available shortly after I clean it up a bit.
If anyone is interested in this work stay tuned, because I have
some design questions that I would like to pose.

Chris
----
Chris Hector			| [email-masked]
Cray Research, Inc		| Opinions expressed are my own 
655-F Lone Oak Dr.       	| and not necessarily those of my employer.
Eagan, MN 55121