Quark to HTML, MSWord to HTML Converters

[Warren Ham]

>>If you like Word, you'll be very comfortable with Internet Assistant.  No,
>>I'm not a paid Microsoft publicist, but this is a good product at the right
>>price!
>
>I have to disagree with this one.  I am extremely uncomfortable with
>Internet Assistant!  Here are some reasons why:
>
>- It makes Word take about twice as long to start up.
>- There doesn't appear to be any way to remove only the Internet Assistant
>extensions without removing/reinstalling Word completely.
>- Worst of all, if you open an existing HTML document in Word-IA, it actually
>  *DELETES* items it doesn't understand, such as background colors.  
>
>I believe IA is still available for Windows only, not for the Mac.
>
>For more views on IA see the URL:
>
>http://da.awa.com:80/nct/discuss/msia/index.html
>
>If you do use Windows Word and you don't plan to import pages authored
>elsewhere into Word, you can use IA to generate and browser-view your web
>pages.  You won't be able to do everything you might want to do with your
>page, but at least you will be able to make HTML that works.  If that's all
>you need it for, then IA will do.  Personally, though, I'm sorry I
installed it.
>
>:(
>
>Genny Engel
>gen at dla.ucop.edu

Thought I'd put my two bits back into this discussion. The original query
was a request for a Word to HTML converter, and it  was in this context that
I made my original contribution. I agree with many of the comments my
original posting has engendered, but they don't detract from the usefulness
of IA as a conversion utility.

IA IS NOT NETSCAPE.  It doesn't support many of the enhancements available
in Netscape. Nevertheless, it does a good job of the INITIAL conversion of a
Word file. As I indicated at the outset, I still need to edit the file after
the conversion.  My main use for it will be twofold: 
1. We are setting up an HTML-based electronic reserve at the University of
Queensland Library, and many of the documents are already in Word format -
IA allows us to do quick-and-dirty conversions so that new documents can be
mounted very quickly, with little investment of staff time.
2. Many of the pages we will be setting up on the Library site will come to
me in Word format, mainly because the Library has settled on Word as its
in-house word processing package. This has the benefit of allowing the
original writers of the pages - not HTML proficient - to provide me with a
file that contains graphics and formatting information. Okay, I have to
rewrite some of this, but it is still a convenient way for me to receive the
documents.

By the way, my favourite editors for HTML are two - Qedit (in DOS), and
Notebook in Windows.  Yep! Plain vanilla text editors. The down side of
these - but I consider it the up side - is that you have to know what you're
doing! You actually have to understand HTML!  We are about to start running
HTML classes for our library staff, and will be using Notepad as the editor.

The comment about IA causing Word to load slowly may be valid, but Word is
such a slow loader in the first place that I really hadn't noticed. This
brings up a perennial gripe of mine (probably not relevant to this list,
however) about the ready availabilty of computer memory and fast processors
allowing computer programmers to become lazy, not optimizing their code for
speed and minimum size. Lumbering behemoths like Word and Windows itself
are a case in point!

Okay, I think I'll throw this back into the ring....

Warren




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Warren L. Ham
Reference Librarian                           phone: +61 7 3365 3247
Undergraduate Library                           fax: +61 7 3365 6888
The University of Queensland          email: w.ham at mailbox.uq.edu.au
St Lucia  Qld  4072  Australia    web: http://www.uq.edu.au/~mlwham/
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