WYSIWYG HTML Editors?

[ffutures]

I gave FF X to Jo Walton yesterday. While the primary version will be PDF, I also want to publish an HTML verson, so I've now got start thinking about converting it to HTML once she's given final approval. The idea of sorting out the coding on a 170-page document is just a little daunting. I wrote the previous games in a text editor and added the HTML code as I wrote - this time I'm starting with a large Word document that contains dozens of tables, text boxes, images, etc. and lots of text formatting. I've also got a bit rusty with HTML, since it's 2-3 years since I've done anything substantial with it.

Word's "Save as HTML" is pretty useless, it tries to micromanage the layout of the document and the sidebars and tables etc. come out as graphic images for some reason - I have no idea why, but it's VERY annoying. I tried saving to HTML from Acrobat, but while it works for simple documents, with something this complicated it comes out as a horrible mess, with the stuff in sidebars, tables, etc. hopelessly jumbled. The tables in particular will be a real pain if I can't find a good way to convert them automatically.

So what I think I'll have to do is paste each section into an HTML editor separately and sort out layout etc. there. I REALLY don't want to hand code this, it could take me a month, so can anyone recommend a good Windows WYSIWYG HTML editor that is preferably (a) free or cheap, (b) not horribly verbose in its coding, (c) I can paste in text and still have italics etc., and (d) I can paste in e.g. tables from Word and get a properly coded HTML table out.

Many thanks!

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Find someone with a Mac and tell them to run it through the textutil command line file format converter. It tends to give excellent results and it can chew up Word files and spit out conformant HTML 4.0 -- it's not perfect but it's generally far superior to the rubbish that Word produces. If you want, email a copy of FF to me and I'll send you the result.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I have a mac, remember - you sold it to me!

I'd be happy to do this but it's currently a 100mb+ word file with all the graphics - they're smaller when resampled to their final size by Acrobat, of course, but I really don't want to do that otherwise, since it's a PITA. I could send it on CD, of course.

I assume this is something that's part of the Mac operating system? If so perhaps I can do it myself, if you could tell me the command sequence I need to use.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're running Leopard or Tiger (textutil didn't come with earlier releases of OS/X), open a Terminal window, cd to the folder with your file in it, and type something like:

textutil -convert html forgotten-futures.doc

It should create a file called forgotten-futures.html in the same folder. Dunno what it does with images -- I'd expect it to be smart enough to export then as JPEG, though.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Lovely - I'll try it tonight. Many thanks!

[autopope.livejournal.com]

textutil --help will give you a list of command-line options.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I get an "error reading FFX.doc" message. Even after I open the file on the mac, edit it, and save it. Not really very informative, I fear...

[lawbag.livejournal.com]

The other option would be to save the file as a PDF document, with HTML Hyperlinks.

This way the PDF would be viewed within your website as an integral document, and would mean you only need to create the document once.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Most of my registered users signed up expecting the next release to be HTML. I suspect that amongst them there will be a few who can't read PDFs - doubt that it's many, but every technical change I've made so far has lost me a few users who didn't want to know - for example, I lost a few with the change from ASCII text to HTML, and had to continue to provide floppies for 3-4 years after I went to CD-ROM. For this release at least I'm going to use both formats, then maybe next time around I'll go to PDF only, if I can't sort out an easy way of doing both.

[lawbag.livejournal.com]

playing Devil's Advocate, it might be worth asking your readers what they want.

given the choice between PDF or HTML, Im a bit of a PDF whore.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think it's a bit late - I'd like to launch ASAP once I have the all-clear from Jo.

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

I'm currently trying out and quite liking an HTML editor called Codetch. It is actually a Firefox plug-in rather than a stand-alone application but seems quite fully featured for a freebie. I gives a source view, WYSIWYG view, and preview window, you can have multiple views in a split screen, and open multiple files in tabs. I'm still learning it and I've only had it installed for a few days so I can't give a whole-hearted recommendation just yet, but I think it is definitely worth a look. The home page is here, http://www.codetch.com/ (http://www.codetch.com/) and you can get the latest stable release of the Firefox add-ons page (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1002?id=1002&application=firefox).

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - sounds useful, I'll give it a try.