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<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Dave: The PageMaker to HTML conversion utility</TITLE> <H1>Dave </H1> </HEAD> <BODY> <H2> The PageMaker to HTML conversion utility</H2> <h1>News!</h1> Work on a non-AppleScript version of Dave has begun. Please try out 1.0 and let me know what you like and don't like. What would be your ideal PageMaker -> HTML converter? The new Dave promises to faster, easier to use, and have more features, so check back here soon for more news! <P> Copyright © 1994-5 <a href="http://www.bucknell.edu/~boulter">Jeff Boulter</a> and <a href="http://www.bucknell.edu/bucknellian"><I>The Bucknellian</I></a> <P> <H3>Current Version: <B> 1.0 </B></H3> The latest version of this document and Dave can always be found at <a href="http://www.bucknell.edu/bucknellian/dave">http://www.bucknell.edu/bucknellian/dave</a>. <P> <H3>Changes since the last version: (1.0b6)</H3> <UL> <LI>More "user friendly" <LI>Better character translation <LI>Easily customizable <LI>Now an AppleScript Application <LI>Faster! </UL> <H3>Changes since the first version:</H3> <UL> <LI>Now strips off the quotation marks around the stories <LI>Various cosmetic changes in HTML code <LI> No longer 'eats' paragraphs (I think!) </UL> <P> <H2>Introduction to Dave </H2> Dave is an AppleScript script (<STRONG>not</STRONG> a regular Macintosh application) that works with PageMaker 5.0 to extract articles and convert them to HTML. <P> Dave is free. Use it, love it, hack it. <P> <P> <H2>System Requirements</H2> <UL> <LI>Any Macintosh that can run AppleScript <LI>AppleScript 1.1 <LI>PageMaker 5.0 (not really needed, but it is the point of the whole thing) <LI>The File IO OSAX from <A HREF="ftp://ftp.bucknell.edu/pub/bucknellian/script-tools-131-as.hqx">Script Tools by Mark Aldritt</a> </UL> <P> I DO NOT KNOW A PAGEMAKER -> HTML CONVERTER FOR THE PC, UNIX, etc (at least for PageMaker.) I have no intention of porting dave to these platforms in the future. There is a list of other<A HREF="http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/Word_proc_filters.html">other conversion packages</A> that create HTML from Quark Xpress, Word, etc. I know of no similar program for PCs. <P> <H2>How to use Dave </H2> <P> <OL> <LI> Make sure that the File IO Addition is in your Scripting Additions folder in your Extensions Folder in your System Folder. (whew!) File IO is the only extra addition that you will need. <LI> Open Dave with the AppleScript Script Editor. <LI> Change the email address and possibly other HTML formatting to suit your needs. If your <B>HTML</B> is shaky, see <A HREF="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html"> A Beginner's Guide to HTML</A>. Some good <A HREF="http://mmm.dartmouth.edu/pages/macscripting/macscripting-home.html"> <B>AppleScript</B> information</A> is available courtesy of the <A HREF="http://mmm.dartmouth.edu/pages/macscripting/macscripting-home.html">Macintosh Scripting List</A>. <LI> Quit the Script Editor, making sure to save your changes. <LI> Put Dave in the Apple Menu Items folder of your System Folder <LI> Open the PageMaker document you wish to convert. <LI> Click (with the arrow tool) a story in PageMaker 5.0. <LI> Select Dave from your Apple Menu. <LI> The first time you run Dave, it (he?) will ask you "Where is PageMaker 5.0?" Just navigate through the dialog until you find your copy of PageMaker 5.0 on your hard drive, select it, and hit OK. <LI> Dave will ask you for an article title, and then a sub title for that story. <LI> Automagically, the text is converted to HTML and linked to in the index.html file on your desktop. It's rather cool. </OL> <P> <H2>Things you should know about Dave</H2> <P> Included in the Dave package is a "souped-up" version of Dave that we use to create <a HREF="http://www.bucknell.edu/bucknellian"><I>The Online Bucknellian</I></A> each week. If you want the ability to do sections or more advanced HTML formatting, take a look at it. <P> Since AppleScript uses the Macintosh built-in text buffer, articles have to be somewhat less than 32K in size.<P> I make a broad assumption that any paragraph less than 25 characters long and greater than 5 characters long is a subhead and is formatted differently. Change this if it bothers you. <P> Dave figures out what section a particular article is in by looking at the title of the PageMaker document. At <A href="http://www.bucknell.edu/bucknellian"><I>The Bucknellian</I></a>, our masters are called News Master, Ops Master, etc and Dave uses this to determine the particular section of an article. <P> My name is <B>not</B> Dave. It's Jeff. (See later section titled <I>"Isn't Dave a stupid name?"</I>) <P> <H2>Dave's hangups</H2> <P> <UL> <LI>Gee, it could be faster, couldn't it? <LI>Cannot do multiple character replaces: e.g. It cannot replace the ASCII equivalent of ellipsis with three periods (...) This is due to the fact that it makes changes out to disk. AppleScript does not allow editing of strings as far as I can tell. </UL> If you have any suggestions for improving Dave, <a href="mailto:boulter@bucknell.edu">mail me, Jeff Boulter <boulter@bucknell.edu></a>. Now is an especially good time to give me suggestions as Dave is being completely rewritten in C++ with more features and generally cooler stuff.<P> <P> <H2>Still interested?</H2> <P> <a href="ftp://ftp.bucknell.edu/pub/bucknellian/dave.cpt.hqx">Pick up a copy of Dave!</a><P> Make sure you pick up a copy of <a href="ftp://ftp.bucknell.edu/pub/bucknellian/script-tools-131-as.hqx">Script Tools by Mark Aldritt</a> as well and put a copy of the File IO Addition in the Scripting Additions folder of your Extensions folder.<P> <P> Go ahead, <a href="ftp://ftp.bucknell.edu/pub/bucknellian/dave.cpt.hqx">take another.</a> Dave is completely free. However, <A HREF="http://www.bucknell.edu/~boulter/">I</A> am not responsible for any damage or loss of data whatsoever caused by Dave, including lost files, fires, and ozone depletion. <P> <H2>Isn't Dave a really dumb name?</H2> <P> No. You got something against Daves? Dave (the program) is named after <a href="http://www.bucknell.edu/~dmaher">Dave (the guy)</a> who has been creating <a href="http://www.bucknell.edu/bucknellian"><I>The Online Bucknellian</I></a> since the days when we cut and pasted into templates. (cold shivers). <P> Hopefully, one day, Dave (the program) will replace <a href="http://www.bucknell.edu/~dmaher">Dave (the guy)</a> and <A HREF="http://www.bucknell.edu/~dmaher">Dave (the guy)</a> can find better things to do with his time (like play <A HREF="http://www.bucknell.edu/~boulter/risk/">Risk</A> ). <HR> <ADDRESS><A href="mailto:boulter@bucknell.edu">Jeff Boulter, boulter@bucknell.edu</A></ADDRESS> </BODY> </HTML>