Table of Contents

1.0 Document id
2.0 Other converters

1.0 Document id

1.1 General

Copyright © 1996-2008 Jari Aalto

License: This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in GNU General Public License v2 or later; or, at your option, distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 or later (GNU FDL).

1.2 T2html program features

Writing text documents is different from writing messages to Usenet or to your fellow workers. There already exists several tools to convert email messages into HTML, like MHonArc, Email hyper archiver, but for regular text documents, like for memos, FAQs, help pages and for other papers, there wasn't any suitable HTML converter couple of years back. The author wanted a simple HTML tool which would read pure plain text documents, like guides, tips pages, documentation, book mark pages etc. and convert them into HTML. Here you will find the specification how to format your text documents for

Few arguments, why plain text is the best source document format:

1.2.1 Overview of features:

1.2.2 HTML conversion

1.2.3 HTML 4.01

1.2.4 Link check for the text file

1.2.5 Splitting the text file to pieces

1.3 How to convert text files into HTML?

The TF specification can be found from the Manual The command used to generate this page was: 

      --author           "Jari Aalto"                               \
      --title            "Conversion for text files"                \
      --html-body         LANG=en                                   \
      --Out                                                         \
      index.txt

1.4 Writing a text document

You need nothing else but a text editor where the current column number is displayed or editor can be configured to advance your TAB by 4 spaces. That's it. An Emacs minor mode (See package tinytf.el) can make the writing documents easy. The mode will help formatting paragraphs, filling bullets numbering headings and keeping TOC up to date.

1.5 Ripping program documentation

1.5.1 Documentation tools in programming languages

Perl is an exception within programmin languages, because it includes internal documentation syntax called POD (Plain Old Syntax), with which you can embed documentation right into the program source. Deriving the documentation from perl programs is a straightforward job. Another well known language (invented long after Perl) is Java, which calls the embedded documentation javadoc. fro all others, there is need to write separate documentation.

1.5.2 Other programming languages

But it is possible to embed documentation inside any programming language: directly into the code. A small Perl utility can be used to extract the documentation provided it was written in TF format. Documentation is put at the beginning of the file and updated there. Program ripdoc.pl extracts the documentation which follows TF guidelines. The idea is that you can generate HTML documents from the embedded 'TF pod'. The conversion goes like this:

Suitable for awk, shell, sh, ksh, C++, Java, Lisp, python, Tcl etc. programming languages. The only criteria is that the language supports one-comment-starter and that the documentation has been written by using it. Languages that have comment-start and comment-end, like C that has /* and */, are not suitable for ripdoc.pl.

2.0 Other converters

2.1 Postscript

2.2 Texinfo

2.3 Other text to HTML tools

2.4 Other Utilities

2.5 General Document Maintenance tools

Html date: 2008-09-20 20:14