From ehood@convex.com Tue Aug 2 10:13:51 1994
Article: 1895 of comp.infosystems.www.misc
From: ehood@convex.com (Earl Hood)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Table of Contents Generator for HTML
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 94 23:21:34 GMT-1:00
Organization: Engineering, Convex Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx USA
Announcing "htmltoc", a Perl program to generate a Table of Contents
(ToC) for HTML documents. Are you tired of manually creating a ToC
for your HTML documents? Would you like an automatic way to easily
index your HTML files? Well "htmltoc" is what you need.
htmltoc is a new addition to the perlWWW package. You can get more
information here
You may also grab htmltoc via ftp from:
ftp.uci.edu/pub/dtd2html/perlWWW.21July1994.tar.gz
This is a beta release of htmltoc. I've tested it on documents I have,
but it has not been completely tested.
Included below is the ASCII version of the htmltoc documentation.
--ewh
__________________________________________________________________________
HTMLTOC
A Perl program to generate a Table of Contents (ToC) for HTML
documents.
_________________________________________________________________
Description
htmltoc allows you to specify "significant elements" that will be
hyperlinked to in a "Table of Contents" (ToC) for a given set of HTML
documents.
Basically, the ToC generated is a multi-level level list containing
links to the significant elements. htmltoc inserts the links into the
ToC to significant elements at a level specified by the user.
Example:
If H1s are specified as level 1, than they appear in the first
level list of the ToC. If H2s are specified as a level 2, than
they appear in a second level list in the ToC.
See ToC Map File on how to tell htmltoc what are the significant
elements and at what level they should be at.
In standard operation, the created ToC is sent to standard output, or
to the file specified by the -toc command-line option. For more
information on controlling the contents of the created ToC, see
Formating the ToC.
htmltoc also supports the ability to incorporate the ToC into the HTML
document itself via the -inline command-line option. This only works
if a single HTML file is being processed. See Inlining the ToC for
more information.
In order for htmltoc to support linking to significant elements,
htmltoc inserts anchors into the significant elements. Since this
requires modification of the original HTML document(s), the originals
are backed up with a ".org" suffix appended to the filenames.
The following sections give more information on htmltoc:
* Usage
* ToC Map File
* Formating the ToC
* Inlining the ToC
* Notes
* Bugs
_________________________________________________________________
Usage
htmltoc is invoked from a Unix shell, with the following syntax:
% htmltoc [options] file ... > tocfile
% htmltoc -toc tocfile [options] file ...
The following options are available:
-footer filename
Append filename, containing HTML markup, to the end of the ToC.
This option is invalid when the -inline option is specified.
-header filename
Prepend filename, containing HTML markup, to the beginning of
the ToC. The desired format of filename is slightly different
if the ToC is being inlined, or is an external document. See
Formating the ToC and Inlining the ToC for more information.
-help
Short message giving all options available to htmltoc.
-inline
Insert ToC into the document being processed. This options is
only valid if one HTML file is being processed. See Inlining
the ToC for more information on this option.
-noorg
htmltoc normally backs up the original HTML files with a ".org"
extension. When this option is specified, htmltoc will remove
the backup files when done.
-ol
Put level 1 ToC entries in an order list (OL).
-prefix string
Use string as the prefix for ID values used in NAME/HREF
attributes in anchors (A) for linking ToC entries to the
document(s). The default prefix is "xtocid".
-textonly
htmltoc by default, preserves HTML markup that exists in a
significant element to appear in the ToC. This options tells
htmltoc to only use the textual content of the ToC element. If
this option is not specified, htmltoc will still ignore the
following tags: A, HR, P.
-title string
Set the title, (i.e. TITLE element) of the generated ToC
document to string. This option has no affect if the -header or
-inline options are specified. The default title is "Table of
Contents".
-toc file
By default, the ToC is sent to standard output (unless the
-inline option is specified). This option explicitly tells
htmltoc to output the ToC to file.
-toclabel string
Put string before ToC. This option has no effect if the -header
option is specified. The default ToC label is "<H1>Table of
Contents</H1>".
-tocmap filename
Use filename as the ToC map file. By default, htmltoc only
indexes H1s and H2s. See ToC Map File for more information.
Any arguments that are not part of the command-line options are
treated as HTML files to be processed.
_________________________________________________________________
ToC Map File
The ToC map file allows you to tell htmltoc what significant elements
to include in the ToC, what level they should appear in the ToC, and
any text to include before and/or after the ToC entry. The format of
the map file is as follows:
significant_element:level:sig_element_end:before_text,after_text
significant_element:level:sig_element_end:before_text,after_text
...
Each line of the map file contains a series of fields separated by the
`:' character. The definition of each field is as follows:
significant_element
The tag name of the significant element. Example values are H1,
H2, H5. This field is case-insensitive.
level
What level the significant element occupies in the ToC. This
valid must be numeric, and greater than 0.
sig_element_end (optional)
The tag name that signifies the termination of the
significant_element. Example: The DT tag is a marker in HTML
and not a container. However, one can index DT sections of a
definition list by using the value DD in the sig_element_end
field (this does assume that each DT has a DD following it). If
the sig_element_end is empty, then the corresponding end tag of
the specified significant_element is used. Example: If H1 is
the significant_element, than htmltoc looks for a "</H1>" for
terminating the significant_element.
Caution: the sig_element_end value should not contain the `<`
and `>' tag delimiters. If you want the sig_element_end to be
the end tag of another element than that of the
significant_element, than use "/element_name".
The sig_element_end field is case-insensitive.
before_text,after_text (optional)
This is literal text that will be inserted before and/or after
the ToC entry for the given significant_element. The
before_text is separated from the after_text by the `,'
character (which implies a comma cannot be contained in the
before/after text). See examples following for the use of this
field.
In the map file, the first two fields MUST be specified.
Following are a few examples to help illustrate how a ToC map file
works.
EXAMPLE 1
The following map file reflects the default mapping htmltoc uses if no
map file is explicitly specified:
# Default mapping for htmltoc
# Comments can be inserted in the map file via the '#' character
H1:1 # H1 are level 1 ToC entries
H2:2 # H2 are level 2 ToC entries
EXAMPLE 2
The following map file makes use of the before/after text fields:
# A ToC map file that adds some formatting
H1:1::<STRONG>,</STRONG> # Make level 1 ToC entries <STRONG>
H2:2::<EM>,</EM> # Make level 2 entries <EM>
H2:3 # Make level 3 entries as is
EXAMPLE 3
The following map file tries to index definition terms:
# A ToC map file that can work for Glossary type documents
H1:1
H2:2
DT:3:DD:<EM>,</EM> # Assumes document has a DD for each DT, otherwise ToC
# will get screwed up.
EXAMPLE 4
The following map file demonstrates how one can bastardize the use
HTML elements:
# A ToC map file that wraps ToC entries in header tags. This is illegal
# HTML, but it looks pretty good in Mosaic.
H1:1::<H3>,</H3>
H2:2::<H4>,</H4>
H3:3::<H5>,</H5>
_________________________________________________________________
Formatting the ToC
The ToC Map File gives you control on how the ToC entries may look,
but htmltoc has other options to affect the final appearance of the
ToC file created.
With the -header option, htmltoc will prepend the contents of the file
before the generated ToC. This allows you to have introductory text,
or any other text, before the ToC.
Note:
If you use the -header option, make sure the file specified
contains the opening HTML tag, the HEAD element (containing the
TITLE element), and the opening BODY tag. However, these
tags/elements should not be in the header file if the -inline
options is used. See Inlining the ToC for information on what
the header file should contain for inlining the ToC.
With the -footer option, htmltoc will append the contents of the file
after the generated ToC.
Note:
If you use the -footer, make sure it includes the closing BODY
and HTML tags.
htmltoc will add the appropriate HTML markup to if either the -header
or -footer option is not specified to insure a valid HTML document is
created for the ToC.
If you do not want/need to deal with header, and footer, files, then
htmltoc allows you specify the title, -title option, of the ToC file;
and it allows you to specify a heading, or label, to put before ToC
entries' list, the -toclabel option. Both options have default values,
see Usage for more information on each option.
_________________________________________________________________
Inlining the ToC
htmltoc supports the ability to incorporating the ToC directly into an
HTML document via the -inline option. Inlining can only occur if one,
and ONLY one, HTML file is being processed, AND the HTML file contains
an opening BODY tag.
The ToC generated is inserted right after the opening BODY tag, and
before any other HTML markup in the file. If the -header option is
specified, then the contents of the specified file are inserted after
the BODY tag, but before the ToC. Otherwise, htmltoc inserts the text
specified by the -toclabel option.
Note:
The header file should not containing the beginning HTML tag
and HEAD element since the HTML file being processed should
already contains these tags/elements.
_________________________________________________________________
Notes
* For the average user, the only thing to worry about is the -title
and -toclabel options. Everything else is provided for customizing
the behavior of htmltoc.
* htmltoc is smart enough to detect anchors inside significant
elements. If the anchor defines the NAME attribute, htmltoc uses
the value. Else, it adds its own NAME attribute to the anchor.
* htmltoc will not process files related to command-line options if
they are also specified to be processed for ToC significant
elements. Example: The command, "htmltoc -header header.html -toc
toc.html *.html" will cause header.html and toc.html to be
included in the HTML files to processed due to shell filename
globbing of "*.html". htmltoc is smart of enough to detect this,
and exempt header.html and toc.html from being processed for ToC
significant elements.
* The TITLE element is treated specially if specified in the ToC map
file. It is illegal to insert anchors (A) into TITLE elements.
Therefore, htmltoc will actually link to the filename itself
instead of the TITLE element of the document.
_________________________________________________________________
Bugs
* Probably
_________________________________________________________________
Earl Hood, ehood@convex.com
htmltoc 1.0.0 beta
--
Earl Hood | CONVEX Computer Corporation
ehood@convex.com | 3000 Waterview Parkway
Phone: (214) 497-4387 | P.O. Box 833851
FAX: (214) 497-4500 | Richardson, TX 75083-3851