Copyright ｩ1995, by Ken Sayward. All rights reserved.
Please send questions, comments and suggestions to Sayward@kagi.com
The latest version and documentation can be fo und on my AOL web page at http://users.aol.com/ksayward/
Description
XTML was created for one basic purpose: To create HTML Tables quickly and easily. If you have data in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, XTML can convert it into a table ready for inclusion in your web site - with one command. You can use the normal excel formatting commands to assign font styles and text alignment, and XTML will produce the necessary HTML tags to reproduce the table on the web. The resulting HTML source is saved into a text file, where you can edit and fine-tune it just as you would any of your other web files.
What you need
･ Microsoft Excel version 5.0 or later (Macintosh or Windows versions).
･ 7 bucks. This is shareware :-)
Please send a check or money order for $7.00 (US) to:
Ken Sayward
155 Flanders Rd
Niantic, CT 06333
USA
NEW: If you wish to pay via credit card, foreign currency, via email or fax, then please use the
included Register program. This uses the Kagi shareware registration service to provide simple
and flexible shareware payment options.
I did spend quite a bit of time writing this to be as useful as possible; If you use it for more than a few days, please register it. If you send me your email address along with the 7 bucks, I'll make sure you get notification of the latest versions when anything changes.
Installation
Macintosh - 'XTML Add-In' is an Add-in module for Microsoft Excel v5.0 or later. Just drop it in the 'Excel Startup Folder (5)' folder inside your preferences folder within the system folder. If you don't have a folder called 'Excel Startup Folder (5)', simply make one and drop the XTML Add-in file into it.
Windows - 'XTML.XLA' is an Add-in module for Microsoft Excel v5.0 or later. Just drop it in the '¥XLStart' subdirectory inside your Excel 5 directory.
Note that the add-in file is binary compatible across Mac and Windows platforms. For Macintosh, the suggested name is "XTML Add-In"; for Windows, the suggested name is "XTML.XLA" (actually, you can name the add-in file anything you want, subject to the restrictions of your operating system).
That's it. The next time you launch Excel, you'll have a new item in the 'Tools' menu, called "XTML", with a few subitems (explained below).
How it works
1) Create your spreadsheet table in Excel (what better place to maintain tabular data?)
2) Format the cells if necessary.
XTML will honor the following, on a cell-by-cell basis:
- bold cells will get marked up as <strong> - (default tag can be changed - see preferences below).
- italic cells will get marked up as <em> (emphasis) - (default tag can be changed - see preferences below).
- bold italic cells will get both <strong> and <em> tags - (default tags can be changed - see preferences below).
- Centered cells will get <td align=center> tags
- Right-aligned cells will get <td align=right> tags
- Numeric cells will default to right aligned, where no specific alignment is applied to the cell.
- Cells formatted with Excel's "center across selection" will get the appropriate COLSPAN tag.
- Column widths as a percentage of total table width (using <td width="x%"> tags). See the explanation below.
3) Position the Excel cursor in any of the cells within the target table
4) Select 'Convert to HTML Tableﾉ' from the 'XTML' pop-up menu in the 'Tools' menu. You'll see the following dialog:
ﾊ
HTML Table Options explained
･ Input Range. The range of excel cells you would like to create HTML source for. Excel will do a best guess based on the active cell when you select "Convert to HTML Tableﾉ" from the menu. You can change the input range by selecting the cells you wish to work with, while the dialog box is open.
･ Window Title. The text which will appear in the window title when the page is viewed with a web browser. The default is the name of the Excel worksheet.
･ Table Caption. The text which will appear above the table, with <caption> & <h2> tags. The default is the name of the Excel worksheet. You can change the header tags to whatever you'd like in the resulting .html file. It seemed to me that <h1> was a bit of overkill.
･ Output Filename. The filename for the resulting text file. The default is the name of the Excel worksheet, with ".html" appended to it. Note: the file will be automatically saved to the current active folder as shown in Excel when you do a 'save asﾉ' or 'openﾉ'.
･ Header and Cell Formatting. Determines the look of the resulting HTML source.
- Default: Marks up the first row of the table with <th> tags; no other formatting.
- Use Excel Formatting: Marks up all cells according to their format and alignment as described in 'How it works'.
- None: No special formatting at all. Only marks up the table with <tr> and <td> tags.
･ Include Table Border. Just what it says.
･ Borders on blank cells. If you check this option, XTML will insert ﾒ ﾓ into HTML table cells, so that those cells get borders around them as well. Only applies when the ﾔInclude Table Borderﾕ option is selected.
･ Border width [ ] pixels. Size of the table border (if enabled). Valid range is 1 - 25. Values outside of this range will be reset to 1 (the default).
･ Table Width [ ] %. Specify the percentage of the width of the web page to display the table. For example, if you enter 50%, the table will be centered on the page but only use half of the current page width. Default is 100%.
Setting Preferences
XTML v1.1.0 and higher maintains a file in your 'preferences' folder called 'XTML Prefs' (in the Windows version, the prefs file is called 'XTMLPREF.txt' and is stored in the same directory as the Excel application file). This file is created automatically the first time you select one of the XTML menu items. It is initially created with default values, but you can change them as follows. Select 'Preferencesﾉ' from the 'XTML' pop-up menu in the 'Tools' menu. You'll see the following dialog:
ﾊ
XTML Preferences explained
･ Horizontal Alignment. Check this box to tell XTML to preserve the alignment of cells as formatted in Excel.
･ Column widths. Check this box to tell XTML to use a <td width="x%"> tag. This tag is added in the first table row which does not have any COLSPAN tags. XTML calculates the width of each column as a percentage of the total table width. Note that despite all the column width formatting you might use in your HTML, web browsers often muck around with the column widths anyway. However, this option does give you some control.
･ Numbers default to right aligned. Check this box to tell XTML to automatically tag numeric cells as right aligned, unless another alignment has been applied to the cell.
ﾊ
･ Numeric Formats. Check this box to tell XTML to preserve the formatting of numeric cells, such as currency, commas, percentages, etc.
･ Font Styles. Check these boxes to tell XTML to preserve the font style of cells as formatted in Excel. In addition, you can specify which tags to use for the (currently) three styles supported. The defaults are shown in the dialog box above.
Caution:If you change the tags for bolditalic, and you still use two different tags (like <b><i>), be careful to get the closing tags in the correct order.
･ Display file format warnings after processing. Check this box so that XTML will remind the user about the fact that output files must be saved as 'formatted text (space delimited)'. If this is unchecked, no warning dialogs will be displayed.
･ Reset Defaults. Click this button to reset the default values for all options in this dialog box.
Future plans
Pretty soon (if I can do this without adding too much processing overhead):
･ Preserve vertical alignment (especially now that XTML handles carriage returns within cells).
･ An option to 'compact' the output HTML code to reduce all the carriage returns. This would result in smaller
HTML files, but they would be less readable.
･ Set 'row-level' alignment in the <tr> tags, if it would reduce the repetition in the <td> tags.
A little later (maybe):
･ Handle 'ROWSPAN'
･ Nested tables.
Distribution
This software is shareware. Permission is hereby granted for non-commercial distribution of unmodified copies of this software, so long as this documentation is included. For information about including this software on compilation CD-ROMs or disks, please contact the author.
