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Subject:Re: Using HTML From:Janet Ansell <ansell -at- UCS -dot- UBC -dot- CA> Date:Mon, 7 Feb 1994 18:10:35 GMT
In article <m0pR28g-000SlqC -at- eros>, Barbara Rigg-Healy <brigg -at- ariel -dot- unm -dot- edu>
wrote:
> I'm interested in hearing from anyone using HTML for online doc design. We
> have a lot of hard-copy documentation that we want to move to an online
> form. I have resisted using online documentation because our "base"
> standard display is VT100. (This is a very robust university environment
> with a zillion different types of displays sitting on desktops. We support
> UNIX flavors, VMS, CMS, MVS and DOS and Mac OS; and lots of applications.)
> I think HTML may give us the flexibitiy we need for good online doc design
> -- even at VT100 level. Has anyone found a translator software to convert
> docs in a WP format or ASCII format to HTML?
There's one called wp2html (for Wordperfect 5.1). More information on it
is reportedly to be found on the Web as:
> How much time does it take to
> build an online doc in HTML? Pros and cons? Advice? Caveats?
I myself am using a translator called rtf2html (for MicroSoft Rich Text
Format, e.g. Word... You can also export directly from Pagemaker to RTF.)
And it's great.
I've set it up to recognize my Word styles and translate them directly
into HTML styles. Takes about 3 seconds to translate a 1000-word document,
a second to create a link to another document or graphic. It's a lot
faster than translating formatted documents to ASCII. Quite frankly, I'm
amazed at how easy it is.
Our university environment also has a zillion different desktop displays.
We too support UNIX, MVS, MTS, DOS, Mac, Windows and lots of applications.
I'm still trying out Mosaic as a way of delivering documents on-line but
so far, the translation part of the equation seems pretty easy to handle.
Some things I'm looking out for are ending up with a maintenance
nightmare, creating files that take so long to display on your average
computer it's hardly worthwhile, putting up information that is out of date
a week later... In other words the usual challenges.)
Janet
--
******************************
Janet Ansell,
Editor, Publications
Computing and Communications, UBC
6356 Agricultural Road, Tel: (604) 822-6205
Vancouver B.C. Canada, V6T 1Z2 e-mail: ansell -at- ucs -dot- ubc -dot- ca
