Scott Norwood <snorwood@balloon.ml.org) writes:
> As to the question at hand: although I presently maintain only a standard
> ASCII version of my FAQ, I'm strongly compelled by the benefits of multiple-
> format documents. I'd like to put out ASCII, HTML, and Postscript versions
> of the same file. The only means that I've come across for doing this is
> the highly powerful, though somewhat kludge-y approach of redoing the
> entire file in LaTeX or one of its variants.
> I'm interested in hearing any other suggestions about this interesting
> problem. Certainly, most garden-variety Windows/Mac-based word processors
> aren't up to the task (at least it would take a fair amount of futzing with
> the mouse to do what I could do in a single command line), yet on the
> other hand, there must be an easier method than writing the whole thing
> in LaTeX or SGML or some similarly obscure markup language, originally
> designed for the typesetting industry.
Well, actually, I *am* managing to maintain a plain ASCII and HTML
version of my FAQ with just one garden-variety word processor file
(an old DOS-based version of WordPerfect), and I do the
conversion each month with only one command. It is definitely
a "somewhat kludge-y" method, though, and took forever to set
up properly.
Basically, I set the original document up in a format that looked
the way I wanted it to look in ASCII text. Because it is annoying
to maintain a document that is littered with HTML, I set up the
formatting so I could insert most of the HTML commands using 'search
and replace' (for example, at one point it searchs for a blank
space followed by a semi-colon, and replaces that with <LI>)
The HTML commands that were unique (mainly "a href" pointers)
were typed into the document, with each command beginning and
ending with a character that isn't used in my FAQ (a "#" sign,
in this case. So a typical HTML command would look like this:
#<a href = "http://www.acole.com"># )
Then I wrote a long macro that would do first strip out
all the text that was surrounded by "#" signs, then save what
was left as a ASCII text file, THEN reopen the original file,
do all the appropriate "search and replace" commands, strip
out the "#" signs, and finally save that as an separate
HTML file.
It works for me. I just open my base document, start up the
macro, and do something else for about ten minutes. It was
a major pain to set up, and it requires that I be very careful
with my formatting when I add new material (use a [TAB] instead
of an [INDENT] and the macro gags and dies), so it's not a method
I can really recommend....
------
Amy Sheldon
ais3@po.cwru.edu
http://www.sff.net/people/Amy.Sheldon
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