[CEUD-ICT] Tools for conversion of Ms Word documents to HTML

[Barry McMullin]

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009, Donal J. Rice wrote:

> Also for larger reports it is desirable that the output is broken into a
> number of HTML pages, with some form of navigation within the page.

<rant>

And another thing (another hobbyhorse): I wasn't going to comment
on this remark by Dónal explicitly, but, as luck would have it,
within two minutes of finishing my previous post, I encounted
exactly the relevant kind of situation.  Except with a rather
different perspective than that implied by Dónal.

The example is here:

<http://arstechnica.com/features/2009/02/the-once-and-future-e-book.ars>

This is an magazine article.  I don't know the exact length; but
I would guess it might run to four or five pages in print
form. In its online incarnation, it has been broken into 7
"pages". I hate this.  I am happy to read/scan it onscreen, but I
just to get on with it, without having to cycle manually through
these successive pages. And I don't think I can be the only
person in this category.  Many similar sites offer an option to
view the whole article in one page.  Admittedly, this is often
referred to as a "print friendly" version (it is friendlier still
if it cuts back on the site navigation noise surrounding the main
article content); but I, for one, pretty well never use it for
printing, but frequently use it for reading.  But, in any case,
this particular site has not deigned to offer the choice: "Read
it in bite-size chunks or not at all, buddy!" (Well, OK: they
have a prominent "Download PDF" link.  I presume this is intended
to allow download of a single PDF file containing the complete
article; but I can't be sure.  I tried using it, but it requires
site registration for access ... and even when I registered, it
*still* didn't work.  And anyway ... I don't even *want* PDF: I
just want the darned text for crying out loud.  What is so
extraordinarily complicated about that?)

The fact that this particular article is about the continuing
failue of "e-books" to become mainstream just adds that extra
irony icing I really enjoy...

</rant>

So what's the point? Breaking up "long" documents across multiple
web pages is not necessarily a good idea.  Yes, in the bad old
days of 14.4 kbps modems (which I remember well) this made
obvious sense.  But it doesn't any more; and in my experience
it's now much more often a bad idea than a good one.

OK, so that's a full 10c worth now! [wink]

Best regards - Barry.

--
Barry McMullin, Dublin City University
   phone: +353-1-700-5432
   web: http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin/