Word documents can easlily be converted to HTML using one of the converter
programmes which are now on the market. There are several which are currently
available:
* Microsoft Internet Assistent (MSIA): This programme is an add-on to
Word. In other words, when it has been installed it is not available as a
separate stand-alone programme, but in the form of additional actions in the
Word File, View, Insert, Format menus. This programme converts a Word document
into a single page with HTML format markup. The main advantage of MSIA is that
it provides very good conversion of text objects which are formatted with
format templates such as headings, numbered and bullet lists, tables, and of
graphics. The main disadvantage is that MSIA only produces a single page of
output, i.e. a single file, and does not take advantage of the heading
structure for producing a set of interlinked files with structured navigation
strategies.
* WordToWeb: This is a commercial programm which does everything that
MSIA does and more: it converts a Word document with heading templates into a
set of HTML pages/files which are interlinked into a hyperdocument with
structured navigation strategies for moving through the graph-structure of the
hyperdocument. WordToWeb is very similar to the well-known UNIX tool
latex2html which has been available for several years. More information
can be obtained by searching the Web with a web search engine.
* RTFTOHTML: This programme is shareware. After an initial trial period,
during which the unregistered software starts with a 20 second delay, the
software must be registered. The programme is similar to WordToWeb and
is very suitable for converting descriptive texts, articles, handbooks into a
hyperdocuments. Like other good conversion software, it offers several options
for generating a table of contents, for splitting the original document into
HTML pages/files at different levels of detail, and for generating either
standard HTML hyperdocuments or frame hyperdocuments. The RTFTOHTML programme
is available for a wide variety of platforms, including Win95 and various
flavours of UNIX. Unfortunately RTFTOHTML does not currently automatically
convert RTF graphics to the GIF format used in web documents, but it does
provide the links which are required by graphics.
The present description refers to RTFTOHTML. However, one way to overcome the
weakness of RTFTOHTML in not providing graphics format conversion is to first
convert the document using Word with MSIE, then converting the document with
RTFTOHTML, and finally renaming the graphics files produced by MSIE (the
numbered *.GIF files) to the names required by RTFTOHTML (the *.WMF files).