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

[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.