<a name="description">Drop Formatter is a desktop drag & drop application. Place an alias of it on your desktop and you may drag TEXT files onto it. From these text files, Drop Formatter will generate formatted HTML files and text files.
One of the annoying things about publishing on the Web is most of the process is repetitive and breath-takingly dull. It seems nearly all of my pages use the same layout. Certainly all of my text is formatted in much the same way for each page. Why can't I then, write what I want in a text editor, say BBEdit, and have a program format the text so it looks good?
I don't want to give up the ability to custom format text, like <i>italicising</i> or <b>bold-facing</b>, but I want the computer to do most of the grunt work for me. After all, isn't that what computers are good at? Repetitive, boring jobs.
I thought so...
<big>HTML Formatting</big>
The source files are essentially HTML files with quite a bit of the extra bits left off. As a result, you can put any valid HTML tags into a source file. Define a link by adding an anchor or style text by adding italics or bold-face.
Drop Formatter reads the text file dropped on it and breaks it into paragraphs. If a line ends with a standard sentence ending punctuation mark ( . ? ! or : ) the paragraph is closed.
Between paragraphs, Drop Formatter inserts a small verticle space. Not quite as much as <br> but about 5 pixels. This vertical space is customisable via the preferences dialog box.
Indented paragraphs are indented roughly 20 pixels by inserting a clear inline GIF file. After a series of indented paragraphs and before the next non-indented paragraph, an additional vertical space is added.
For the most part, the actual text of the file is left untouched. One exception is the dash character. When Drop Formatter encounters a dash character between two alphabetic characters, it inserts the optional word-break tag following the dash. This isn't quite as good as optional hyphenation (a feature sorely lacking in both Netscape and Microsoft's products) but it is quite a bit better than adding <wbr> by hand.
You might think the header file determines the title of the document; but, if the source file has a title block, the text of the title block will replace the title specified in the header file. The text of the title block will be formatted using the big tag in the actual body.
<big>Text Formatting</big>
Drop Formatter can also generate a plain text version of the source file dropped on it. All HTML tags are stripped from the source file. Some of the HTML tags are interpretted and affect the resultant text.
The italic tag quotes the text it encapsulates. This is how I work, so it is how Drop Formatter works. I might place this sort of behavior in a preference if there is enough interest. Basically, I italicise things which were italics not available I would quote. Because plain text has no italics, where italics are requested the text is quoted. I would have done something with bold and underline, but I couldn't come up with anything.
Please note, I mean italics as represented by the tag <i> not emphasis as represented by <em>. This gives you a way to specify italics which should <em>not</em> be quoted. I use this difference a lot.
<big>Headers & Footers</big>
When formatting HTML output, Drop Formatter looks for header and footer files in the same folder as the source file. You may have header and footer files that are specific to individual files or generic to all files.
File specific headers and footers should have the form <code>BaseFile.header.html</code> and <code>BaseFile.footer.html</code>. Generic headers and footers should be named <code>header.html</code> and <code>footer.html</code>.
If neither file-specific nor generic header & footer can be found in the same directory as the source file, Drop Formatter looks for the files <code>header.html</code> and <code>footer.html</code> in its directory. These default files better exist or Drop Formatter will refuse to format your HTML.
If you have any comments or suggestions for enhancements, please, contact me by mail at <a href="mailto:jwatkins@futurepress.com">jwatkins@futurepress.com</a>. I don't want this tool to become huge and bloated but there are probably a half dozen things I might add to make it a bit cooler and more useful.
As far as paying for Drop Formatter goes, don't bother. I use a lot of shareware and freeware tools while creating web-sites and software. I'm happy to give back a little of what I've gotten. But if you feel you really have to send me some money, I won't complain.
<big>What's New</big>
<a name="new1.1">Version 1.1</a>
Hah! Well, in addition to adding a 68K version, which I simply forgot in version 1.0, I've subtly changed how paragraphs are spaced. The space between un-indented paragraphs is no longer the same as the InterSection space, it is now twice the InterParagraph space. As a result, headers bind a bit closer to the paragraph they head.
I've also tuned the code to handle HTML quoted entities while generating text files. If you have the string & in your file (to generate an ampersand) you will get an ampersand in your text file. Made pretty good sense, I thought.
You may now, via the preferences dialog, specify whether the title should be rendered in a larger or smaller font. Some of my pages are titled by the creation date. I wanted the date smaller and in the top right corner of the page. I can now do that. Only, I've got to change the preference setting each time.
<a name="upcoming"><big>What's Coming</big></a>
Style Sheets
At the moment, I'm not certain how I'll do this, but I know I want to. Ideally, any option you might specify via the preference dialog box could be specified by placing an option in the Header file.
Another thought I had was to create another set of files named "style". You could have a default style sheet in the same folder as the application as well as a generic style sheet in the same folder as the document. You might even have a document specific style sheet. This would undoubtably give you the most configurable settings.
Unlike the header and footer, style sheets should be cumulative. The app ought to read the default style sheet first (in the application's folder), then the style sheet in the same directory as the document, and finally the style sheet for the document.
You should expect style sheets to appear in the next release.
