Linux Unleashed, Third Edition:HTML Programming Basics





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HTML Development on Linux
One system that has gained popularity among Linux users is tkWWW. tkWWW is a tool for the Tcl language and its Tk extension for X. tkWWW is a combination of a Web browser and a near-WYSIWYG HTML editor. Although originally UNIX based, tkWWW has been ported to several other platforms, including Windows and Macintosh.


Note:  tkWWW can be obtained through anonymous FTP to harbor.ecn.purdue.edu in the directory /pub/tcl/extensions. Copies of Tcl and Tk can be found in several sites depending on the platform required, although most distributions of Linux have Tcl and Tk included in the distribution set. As a starting point, try anonymous FTP to ftp.aud.alcatel.com in the directory tcl/extensions or check the official Tcl/Tk page at http://www.sunscript.com.

When you create a Web page with tkWWW in editor mode, you can then flip modes to browser to see the same page properly formatted. In editor mode, most of the formatting is correct, but the tags are left visible. This makes for fast development of a Web page.

Unfortunately, tkWWW must rely on Tk for its windowing, which tends to slow things down a bit on average processors. Also, the browser aspect of tkWWW is not impressive, using standard Tk frames. However, as a prototyping tool, tkWWW is very attractive, especially if you know the Tcl language.
Another option is to use an HTML filter. HTML filters are tools that let you take a document produced with any kind of editor including ASCII text editors) and convert the document to HTML. Filters are useful when you work in an editor that has a proprietary format, such as Word.
HTML filters are attractive if you want to continue working in your favorite editor and simply want a utility to convert your document with tags to HTML. Filters tend to be fast and easy to work with, because they take a filename as input and generate an HTML output file. The degree of error checking and reporting varies with the tool.
There are filters available for most types of documents, many of which are available directly for Linux, or as source code that can be recompiled without modification under Linux. Word for Windows and Word for DOS documents can be converted to HTML with the CU_HTML and ANT_HTML extensions mentioned earlier. A few stand-alone conversion utilities have also begun to appear. The utility WPTOHTML converts Word Perfect documents to HTML. WPTOHTML is a set of macros for Word Perfect versions 5.1 and 6.0. The Word Perfect filter can also be used with other word processor formats that Word Perfect can import.
FrameMaker and FrameBuilder documents can be converted to HTML format with the tool FM2HTML. FM2HTML is a set of scripts for converting Frame documents to HTML, while preserving hypertext links and tables. It also handles GIF files without a problem. Because Frame documents are platform independent, Frame documents developed on a PC or Macintosh could be moved to the Linux platform and FM2HTML executed there.

Note:  A copy of FM2HTML is available by anonymous FTP from bang.nta.no in the directory /pub. The UNIX set is called fm2html.tar.v.0.n.m.Z.

LaTeX and TeX files can be converted to HTML with several different utilities. There are quite a few Linux-based utilities available, including LATEXTOHTML, which can even handle inline LaTeX equations and links. For simpler documents, the utility VULCANIZE is faster but can’t handle mathematical equations. Both LATEXTOHTML and VULCANIZE are Perl scripts.

Note:  LATEXTOHTML is available through anonymous FTP from ftp.tex.ac.uk in the directory pub/archive/support as the file latextohtml. VULCANIZE can be obtained from the Web site http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mjd/vulcanize.html.


Note:  RTFTOHTML is available through http://www.w3.org/hypertext/www/tools/ rtftohtml-2.6.html.

RTFTOHTML is a common utility for converting RTF format documents to HTML. Many word processors handle RTF formats, so an RTF document can be saved from your favorite word processor and then RTFTOHTML run to convert the files.




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