 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Converting Documents to HTML Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au |
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You've probably got some existing documents that you'd like to incorporate
in your Web pages... if only they were in HTML format. While you can convert them into HTML with almost any
document publishing program these days, the conversion often doesn't work as well as you expect. Displaced
graphics, misaligned text and hyperlinks converted to plain text are nothing out of the ordinary. This is
where Click to Convert comes in. Click promises to convert documents into faithful HTML copies of the
original, preserving fonts, layout, placement, links and so on. Click doesn't replace a full-blown Web
editor, but it is a handy tool to have if some of your Web documents originate in other programs.
During the simple installation procedure, Click installs itself as a printer driver. From this point onwards
you simply print your document to the Click "printer" to convert it into HTML. The software you print from is
largely irrelevant; as long as it can output to a printer, Click can grab and process the output. Once you've
"printed" your document it appears in the Click window, from where you can tweak a few simple settings and
specify where you want the output located. When you're ready, press the "publish" button and Click starts
converting.
Click can convert multiple documents simultaneously, add navigation links to multi-page documents and add
borders around them. You can choose to split documents over multiple pages, or output them as a single
continuous page. Click saves all files belonging to each document in a single folder, so it is easy to upload
the document to your Web server; alternatively, Click's built-in FTP publishing option can do it for you
automatically. To avoid the issue of royalty payments on GIF files, Click saves images in PNG format; as long
as you and your site visitors are using a browser which supports PNG, such as version 4 or higher of either
Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, this shouldn't pose a problem.
I experimented with Click using a variety of host programs and layout formats, including Microsoft Word,
Publisher, Excel, Access, Corel WordPerfect, Print House, Print Office as well as a couple of small
utilities. The output from my first few attempts had some minor problems, mainly displaced or missing text,
and extraneous blank pages. However, a couple of tweaks to Click's settings and - in the case of the extra
pages - changing the page size in the host program solved the problems. Within a few minutes of commencing my
tests, I had become a Click expert and was able to choose the most appropriate settings for a particular
document right from the start.
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For some unknown reason, Corel Print Office documents refused
to output to the Click window, but I encountered no problems with Print Office's almost-twin, Corel Print
House. The only other temporary problem I encountered was high definition graphics suffering a large
degradation in quality. According to Click's FAQ, most commonly such problems are related to printer
settings; however, the solution in my case turned out to be changing my monitor settings from 256 colours to
16-bit High Colour.
Once you've converted your document, you can edit it in a Web page editor if necessary and incorporate it
into the rest of your site. One thing to remember is that Click doesn't handle justified or kerneled text
well, but you can turn these options off in your host program or choose the "convert text to image" option in
Click's settings. Click also has a habit of converting multiple graphics into a single large background
graphic. These idiosyncrasies can make Click's HTML documents harder to edit in HTML form, so you may find it
easiest to edit documents in the host program and re-publish them to Click.
Keep in mind that Click only complements - it doesn't replace - a proper Web page editor. And once a page is
published to Click, it is no longer linked to the original document; so if the information on the original
document changes, you'll have to re-publish the document to Click and re-upload it to your Web server.
Overall, I found Click to Convert simple to use and the problems I encountered easily overcome. In every case
- apart from the Corel Print Office document which wouldn't output - Click produced an HTML copy that looked
exactly like the original.
Cost and Availability
From US$149 per license. Purchase online from
www.clicktoconvert.com/buy.asp. Alternatively, contact Inzone Software, PO Box 106-328, Downtown,
Auckland, New Zealand.
Minimum System Requirements
Windows 95.
Reprinted from the December 2000 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
