5. really, really hard. you'd only get the HTML,
without the images -- you'd need a little browser
inside to go get them as well.
6. really, really, really hard. then there's JavaScript,
plugins, active-x controls, etc....
seriously though, perhaps an AbiWord exporter for Mozilla
might make a better fit. afterall, you'd have access to
the html, the images, etc.... still sounds pretty scary
though...
jeff
At 03:26 PM 3/22/99 -0600, Eric W. Sink wrote:
>> On to more useful topics, is there any interest/current development in
an HTML
>> import class? It seems a to be a "doable" task given my free time.
>
>As far as we know, no one is working on an HTML importer
>for AbiWord.
>
>The core team here at AbiSource doesn't have much interest
>in this particular feature, actually. Here's why:
>
>1. Importing HTML into a word processor is hard.
>
>2. Very hard. There's a paradigm mismatch of pretty big
>proportions, since HTML has features which word processors
>lack (like frames), and lacks features which word processors
>have (like headers and footers)
>
>3. Really hard. If you add this feature, users will expect
>it to be able to import any HTML file which can be read
>by the major browsers. This is a nightmarish proposition,
>since IE and Netscape are very forgiving of improper HTML
>markup. Writing an interoperable HTML parser requires a
>lot of reverse engineering work, trying to figure out the
>particular bugs in Netscape's implementation. Using the
>Mozilla code may provide information, but the code is
>not GPL-compatible, so you can't cut and paste.
>
>4. Writing an interoperable HTML implementation is not fun.
>Several of us here at AbiSource are former employees of
>Spyglass, where we worked on the team which wrote Spyglass'
>commercial version of Mosaic, which became Microsoft's
>Internet Explorer. After considerable time spent on the
>couches of various shrinks, most of the emotional scars
>have healed. None of us are prepared to face that world again.
>
>:-)
>
>--
>Eric W. Sink, Software Craftsman
>eric@abisource.com
>