124 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
124 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
Welcome to xlhtml.
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I. INTRODUCTION
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The xlhtml program will take an Excel 95, or 97 file as input and convert
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it to highly optimized html. The output is via standard out so it can be
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re-directed to files or piped to filters or used as a gateway on the internet.
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II. INSTALLATION
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If you are upgrading, run the 'make uninstall' target from the original directory
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before following these steps.
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To build this application, from the top directory type:
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./configure --prefix=/<target installation directory e.g. /usr/local or /opt>
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make
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make install
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Then to finish it up, you will need to go into netscape and tell the navigator
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to use the nsxlview script to handle Microsoft Excel files.
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e.g. <path to executable>/nsxlview %s
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You should be able to then browse to a file and open it. There is a file
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included in the xlhtml directory you can test with: Test.xls.
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The shell scripts: nsxlview & nsopen may need modification to correct the
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paths to fit your system. Also, depending on where you install it, you
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may have to modify your PATH environmental variable.
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III. UNINSTALLING
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You may want to keep this directory around since you can do a make uninstall
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later. In the meantime, I suggest doing a make clean after installation to
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minimize disk space useage.
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IV. COMMANDLINE OPTIONS
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xlhtml now has several command line options that let you tailor its output. The
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command is now: xlhtml [-nc -a -fw -bc -tc -bi -c] file.xls
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Where -nc tells it not to colorize the output.
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-a aggressively optimize html by removing </TR> </TD> or VALIGN="bottom"
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Some older browsers may not display properly in this mode.
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-fw suppress formula warnings about accuracy
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-bc Override the background color. e.g. -bg808080 for gray
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-tc Override the text color. e.g. -tcFF0000 for red
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-bi Use background image e.g. -bi/home/httpd/icon/tar.gif
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-c Centers the tables horizontally
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-te Trims empty rows & columns at the edges of a worksheet
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-v Prints program version
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-m No encoding for multibyte
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-asc Ascii out of -dp and extraction data (-x?)
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-dp Dump page count and max columns and rows per page
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-xp Page for extraction (zero based)
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-xc Columns (separated by a dash) for extraction (zero based)
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-xr Rows (separated by a dash) to be extracted (zero based)
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An example of the extraction command line is:
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xlhtml -fw -asc -xp:0 -xr:2-6 -xc:0-1 Test.xls
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The extraction output is:
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Formatted output of cells by column left to right, columns separated
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by a tab, end of row is: 0x0A, end of file: \n\n
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*NOTE: Run the gpdemo file for a demonstration plot in Netscape. Also,
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you MUST specify all 3 -x commands or the results may not be as desired.
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V. PERFORMANCE TUNING
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There are some user "tunable" parameters in the beginning of the xlhtml.c file.
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The program allocates resources in chunks so that it scales efficiently without
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wasting memory. The smaller the chunks, the less wasted memory. The trade off,
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though, is that it has to allocate memory more often - which slows things down.
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Odds are, you should never need to change them from the default.
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VI. INTERNATIONAL CHARACTERS
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xlhtml uses three different character sets. It tries to use ascii until it
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finds a character greater than 127. At this point, it switches to the
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windows-1252 characterset. If the excel file specifies any 2 byte characters,
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it switches to utf-8. This handles most situations correctly. If however,
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you find yourself with a system that does not support utf-8 (text mode
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browsers & some versions of unix) and you need multi-byte support,
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try using the program lv.It can be downloaded from:
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http://www.ff.iij4u.or.jp/~nrt/lv/
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The text only browser, w3m, could be used as follows for Japanese:
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xlhtml file.xls | lv -Iu8 -Oej | w3m -T text/html
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(Thanks to Hironori Sakamoto for this suggestion.)
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VII. TROUBLESHOOTING
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Using Netscape, you may occassionally see a file not found error. This usually
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comes when printing or going back to a previously converted file. This is
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the default behavior and it can be changed by commenting out the rm $tmp*
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in nsxlview. I do this so you don't have files hanging around in your tmp
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directory where other people might be able to see them.
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In general, if you can type xlhtml and get a usage error message, the PATH
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is working. If you don't, your PATH environmental variable needs adjusting.
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Next try passing the full path to xlhtml of the file you want converted. If it
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has problems with it, you may have a file the system can't interpret. To check
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your installation, try passing the full path of xlhtml/Test.xls and see what
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it does with that.
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If you get an error message saying "get another compiler"...this comes from the
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cole library. It needs a recent copy of automake, autoconf, or libtool. You
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can manually adjust the header files if you know you machine data sizes.
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VIII. CONTRIBUTED SCRIPTS
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xlhtml now has a contributed scripts directory. If you look in the xlhtml/contrib
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directory you will find what people are giving me. I cannot offer support for
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files I didn't create, but there is contact information with the files. If you
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have something to share...send it to me. If you've contributed...THANKS!
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Charles N Wyble
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jackshck@yahoo.com
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