HTML Convertors/Generators

[Jason Clinton]

Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
> Quoting Jason Clinton <clintonj at umkc.edu>:
>>Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
>>
>>>I want to be able to convert an MS Word 97 or 2000 document to
>>>reasonably clean HTML that can be hacked by a sysadmin in a text
>>
>>editor.
>>
>>...JEdit and HTML-KIT for Windoze ...
>
> Do you know if they'll take a Word file as input, or do they rely on taking
> an "HTML" file as produced by word.  I really don't think HTML Tidy is up to
> the horrors that are created by Word 2000.

It relly's on taking an "HTML" file as produced by Word. I think you'll
be amazed at how wonderfully it does clean those things up. There are
some options/flags you need to enable like 'clean' and 'word-2000' options.

>>>Failing that, we once again open the call for HTML editors for Linux.
>>JEdit ... bluefish ... quanta ... Kate
>
> How about some relative merits?  One of the problems often cited about major
> linux distros is that they throw all of these different tools for the same job
> at you, and your only option is to spend hours learning one, then hours
> learning another, then another, then choose.  I mean, anybody can do a search
> on Freshmeat and come up with a list of programs, but which is worth spending
> the time learning?
>
> I'm leaning a bit toward Bluefish, but will look at JEdit since it's cross-
> platform.

Bluefish is nice but lacks FTP and WebDAV support. It also seems way too
complicated to get it to play nice with tidy (which is an absolue
necessity).

Quanta is nicer but I couldn't get it to work with Tidy. It has FTP and
WebDAV support via the KI/O Slave.

Kate is a lean text editor that has FTP and WebDAV support. It doesn't
support Tidy directly but you can embed a console in it that can easily
modify a file you're working on. I used it for a bit because it was face
and interfaced nicely with KDE 3 but I don't use it for it's lack of
feautres.

JEdit is the end-all answer to text editors. I LOVE this thing and I
just started using it about two weeks ago. It has syntax highlighting as
well as code management. It supports plugins and will automatically
display a list of available plugins, retrieve and install them for you.
It has FTP, Tidy, Autocomplete, and Syntax checking built in. It also
makes one hell of a Java or C/C++ editor. It also supports 'font
smoothing with fractional font metrics' for those with a lot of
processor power. Text files never looked so pretty. This feature makes
it a lot easier on my eyes in long coding sessions.

I would choose JEdit if you know HTML. I would choose bluefish if you
are just getting started.

Either way, also HIGHLY recommend O'Reilly's books on HTML and CSS.
Their most recent book is "Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference" which
has lots of info on what tags do and don't work in the latest browsers.
O'Reilly's Safari web-based book subscription also kicks ass. I'm
subscribed at $14.95/month and get full access to up to 10 O'Reilly
books at any time (including being fully searchable).

--
Jason Clinton
I don't believe in witty sigs.