Welcome to ppthtml. I. INTRODUCTION The ppthtml program will take a PowerPoint 97/95 file as input and convert it to html. The output is via standard out so it can be re-directed to files or piped to filters or used as a gateway to the internet. II. INSTALLATION To build this application, from the top directory, type: ./configure --prefix=/<target installation directory e.g. /usr/local or /opt> make make install Then to finish it up, you will need to go into netscape and tell the navigator to use the nspptview script to handle Microsoft Excel files. e.g. <path to executable>/nspptview %s You should be able to then browse to a file and open it. There is a file included in the ppthtml directory you can test with, test.ppt. The shell script nspptview works well. You may need to modify the path in it to fit you system, though. Also, depending on where you install it, you may have to modify your PATH environmental variable. III. UNINSTALLING You may want to keep the tar directory around since you can do a make uninstall later. In the meantime, I suggest doing a make clean after installation to get the size down. IV. COMMANDLINE OPTIONS ppthtml now has several command line options that let you tailor its output. The command is now: ppthtml [] file.ppt V. PERFORMANCE TUNING There are also some user "tunable" parameters in the beginning of the ppthtml.c file. If you get a red message at the bottom of your web browser after converting a big presentation, these are the parameters to adjust. Generally, you would adjust them up in value. I have them adjusted to what I call normal for my usage. Your usage may differ. Don't increase them greatly...just 10-15% and re-compile. If that don't work, increase another 10-15% until it works. VI. TROUBLESHOOTING Using Netscape, you may occassionally see a file not found error. This usually comes when printing or going back to a previously converted file. This is the default behavior and it can be changed by commenting out the rm $tmp* in nspptview. I do this so you don't have files hanging around in your tmp directory where other people might be able to see them. In general, if you can type ppthtml and get a usage error message, the PATH is working. If you don't, your PATH environmental variable needs adjusting. Next try passing the full path to ppthtml of the file you want converted. If it has problems with it, you may have a file the system can't interpret. To check your installation, try passing the full path of ppthtml/threads.ppt and see what it does with that. Charles N Wyble jackshck@thewybles.com