html Generators
Several common programs claim to be able to
generate html documents.
This page reviews (roasts) a few of them.
MS Word 97
| Original Formatting
| | After Conversion
|
|---|
| Single spaced lines terminated by hard returns
| | Double space lines
|
| Indented text using Ctrl-Tab
| | Left justified because tabs are not rendered -
	 was coded instead.
Actually, Word shows it indented, but IE does not.
|
|
| |
|
- Most paragraphs have ending tags (these are never required).
Some paragraphs in tables do not have ending tags.
- Italics and bold map correctly
- The page title is set via File / Properties
- All tags are capitalized, the new xml "standard" requires lower case
- Indents (created with Tab keys) are rendered with <DIR> </DIR> tags.
<DIR> commands
are deprecated and
functionally equivalent to <UL> commands.
W3.org suggests using UL instead of DIR.
MS Word 97 SR-1
I have witnessed the following conversions,
but I can not recreate them.
| Original Formatting
| | After Conversion
|
|---|
| The text was centered
| | Left justified (a leading tab had no effect)
|
| A table created with columns
| | 6 <DIR> commands
|
| Indented text
| | Left justified because tabs are not rendered.
In other places, <DIR> commands are used to
indent text.
|
|
| |
|
Word 97 (no upgrades)
While some tables don't convert correctly,
others simply convert poorly.
In one test,
tables were defined with a fixed width
(638 - the web default is to autosize).
There is no way to change this to autosize.
Text was aligned in a table cell using - <P ALIGN="RIGHT"> -
which may or may not work in IE 5.0.
(I've seen it both ways.)
Word 97 Differences
|
| Basic
| SR 1
|
|---|
| Create html
| Select File / Save as HTML...
| Select File / Save As... and set the Save as type to HTML Document
|
| View html
| View / HTML Source
| There is no way to view the document's html codes
|
| File Save
| The Save as type includes file extensions
| File extensions are not shown
|
Word 97 Examples
A few examples are provided
here.
- One document is made of simple paragraphs - it converts ok.
- The other is a survey form with lots of tabs and manual spacing -
its conversion is terrible.
Office 2000
When Office 2000 applications create html,
they use tons of style sheets and other unfriendly tags.
It is truely a mess.
(But the pages look great if your browser supports all that stuff.)
Microsoft provides the
Office 2000 HTML Filter 2.0
to remove the style sheets and other junk.
You might find this useful.
AceHTML 4
This
freeware package is a step up from notepad. It provides
- Spell checking
- Color coded editing
- Netscape & IE only tags are identified as such
- A good toolbar to select codes from
- Pre-built Java, JavaScript, and DHTML display elements (e.g menus)
- Some tags can be edited via a dialog box
(Table, Form, Body - but not tr, td, input)
- Good syntax checker
Its main drawback is the lack of WYSIWYG editing.
Also, the Java menu class is flakey - it works from the local drive
but not from the internet.
There are a few additional problems, but it seems well behaved.
MS FrontPage
If an html file is generated from MS Word and then you
double click the filename from inside FrontPage -
suprise, it opens in Word.
To open it in FrontPage, you must delete (modify) the Generator
metatag.
Author: Robert Clemenzi -
clemenzi@cpcug.org