I've player around with a few concepts involving this, and come up with 3
possible (although tricky) solutions:
1. Use your own code similar to the UBB syntax used on many message board
systems. Here users can use HTML-like codes such as [b]Text in bold[/b],
[i]text in italics[/i] etc - it's very easy for them to learn and doesn't
scare people as much as HTML.
2. Get users to "save as HTML" from Word documents then upload the HTML
files via an upload form. The script then needs to strip off the <head>
section and <body> tags - as long as they haven't put any fixed width tables
or images in the document this will work fine, so it helps if you have
guidelines for the creation of documents (i.e don't put images in there).
3. User Dynamic HTML and some pretty tricky CSS / JavaScript stuff to give
users a WYSIWYG interface for editing their documents. This is hard to
describe but an example of it in action can be seen here:
http://gossamer-threads.com/tmp/editor/
The first option is easy to implement but means users have to learn
something new, the second works great but requires users to save stuff as
HTML (which may lead to confusion) and the third option whlie impressive
only works on MSIE and would be incredibly difficult to set up.
Alternatively using PHP's COM functions should allow you to use Word itself
to process the files (for example save them as HTML then strip the header
sections etc) - which is probably the best solution.
-----Original Message-----
From: Darvin Andrioli [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 25 January 2001 08:55
To: 'Mike Flynn'; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [PHP-WIN] Is it possible to CONVERT file formats?
Hi Mike
I'm wrinting an intranet site where my colleagues can write notes about
their job, so I'm interested to your post.
I evaluated many ways to write this notes.Html? No, nobody knows html.
Word? Yes it may be a possible solution. As you wrote its usefull get only
the text, because I get the control of many visualization aspect (
background color, text disposition ,... )
I'm evaluating other way. Textarea may be another possible solution. I
haven't character format like bold, italics, but it is easy to install, you
need only the browser, ad it's simple to use.
If I insert some button, and ,using javascript code, I put particular tag
inside the textarea ( i.e. HTML tag for bold, italic,.. ), I can give to my
collegues some format control over the text without any html knowledge about
html.
In this moment I prefer the "word solution", I think is better for long
document, and the last solution ( textarea with javascript ) for small
notes. I think that I'll give both the ways.
If you get some new could you let me know?
Thanks
Darvin
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Flynn [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 5:25 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PHP-WIN] Is it possible to CONVERT file formats?
Hey all,
We are trying to develop a system to allow people to upload meeting minutes
from our organization's meetings. We'd like to assume no HTML knowledge on
the user's part. The easiest method would be to ask them just to upload
plain text, or to upload their MS Word file (as they do now) and hope
everyone can read MS Word.
Ideally, however, I'd like to be able to allow them the niceities of HTML
(bold, italic, underline, big, small) without any specific file format.
Are there any systems in place to take a file such as a basic Word file and
convert its text (roughly) to HTML? Not a whole HTML page, like as if you
exported it to HTML from Word, just the text and its properties.
If anyone knows of anything like this, it would be great.
Thanks!
-Mike Flynn
Come the millennium month 12, in the home of the greatest power,
the village idiot will come forth to be acclaimed the leader.
(Nostradamus, 1555)
I do know I'm ready for the job.
And, if not, that's just the way it goes.
(George W. Bush, 2000)
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