Re: [Ql-Users] Tables
Tony Firshman wrote:
Why on earth is there a habit (in C68 as well I expect, dragging back
OnT) of not aligning '{' with '}'. I always do.
Because aligned braces are just wrong :-D
Marcel
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Re: [Ql-Users] Tables
On 31/12/10 12:47, Dilwyn Jones wrote: Does anyone know of any software that will convert a html table into auto-spaced plain text? I'm trying to convert some HTML tables into plain text columns for the QL. Most HTML-text converters just put a space between columns in the table, with the result that the text looks awful. It'd be a big job to do this by hand (scan table, pass 1, find all TR and TD tags and keep a record of the longest in each column, scan 2, extract the text and pad each one with spaces), and although I'm sure I could write such a converter, why do so if there's already QL code to do just that? Don't forget, when you find a table, there is a possibility that there is another table embedded in between the TD tags! So, you'll have to get recursive! Theres a PC program here http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/htmlastext.html that allows Simple tables can be delimited by spaces, tab characters, commas, or CRLF so it's probably not what you need. Cheers, Norman. -- Norman Dunbar Dunbar IT Consultants Ltd Registered address: Thorpe House 61 Richardshaw Lane Pudsey West Yorkshire United Kingdom LS28 7EL Company Number: 05132767 ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] Tables
each one with spaces), and although I'm sure I could write such a converter, why do so if there's already QL code to do just that? And then you have cells with COLSPAN and/or ROWSPAN to cope with! And table captions :-) Cheers, Norman. -- Norman Dunbar Dunbar IT Consultants Ltd Registered address: Thorpe House 61 Richardshaw Lane Pudsey West Yorkshire United Kingdom LS28 7EL Company Number: 05132767 ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] Tables
Norman Dunbar wrote, on 31/Dec/10 13:22 | Dec31: each one with spaces), and although I'm sure I could write such a converter, why do so if there's already QL code to do just that? And then you have cells with COLSPAN and/or ROWSPAN to cope with! And table captions ... and mis-configured tables. Beware - browsers will cope (successfully in the main) with all sorts of bad html. This is terrible of course, not just because it encourages bad coding, but also the programmer then does not *see* that the code is bad. ... much like I suppose Superbasic's habit of implicitly adding missing END statements. Tony -- QBBS (QL fido BBS 2:257/67) +44(0)1442-828255 t...@firshman.co.uk http://firshman.co.uk Voice: +44(0)1442-828254 Fax: +44(0)1442-828255 Skype: tonyfirshman TF Services, 29 Longfield Road, TRING, Herts, HP23 4DG ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] Tables
On 31/12/10 13:22, Norman Dunbar wrote: each one with spaces), and although I'm sure I could write such a converter, why do so if there's already QL code to do just that? And then you have cells with COLSPAN and/or ROWSPAN to cope with! And table captions And then the stuff that can't be represented as is : quote, amp, gt, lt etc . These will need translating out of the text first before checking the lengths. I'm seeing more and more reasons why, perhaps, there are so few converters that actually cope! Cheers, Norman. PS. I promise not to put any more downers on this thread! -- Norman Dunbar Dunbar IT Consultants Ltd Registered address: Thorpe House 61 Richardshaw Lane Pudsey West Yorkshire United Kingdom LS28 7EL Company Number: 05132767 ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] Tables
Norman Dunbar wrote: On 31/12/10 12:47, Dilwyn Jones wrote: Does anyone know of any software that will convert a html table into auto-spaced plain text? I'm trying to convert some HTML tables into plain text columns for the QL. Most HTML-text converters just put a space between columns in the table, with the result that the text looks awful. It'd be a big job to do this by hand (scan table, pass 1, find all TR and TD tags and keep a record of the longest in each column, scan 2, extract the text and pad each one with spaces), and although I'm sure I could write such a converter, why do so if there's already QL code to do just that? Don't forget, when you find a table, there is a possibility that there is another table embedded in between the TD tags! So, you'll have to get recursive! Curses and Recurses! Actually, the tables concerned are pretty simple text column tables, no nests of tables, so anything which produces a file I can handle more easily with less hand conversion should be OK. Most non-space delimiters such as tabs between columns could be easily handled anyway. Must admit I hadn't thought of the Entity characters, but even those aren't too hard to process if you make the assumption that each entity=1 text character (which they are likely to be in the particular files I'm converting. There are loads of tags and entities which I might run into, but luckily the text tables in these files are pretty simple affairs,. Theres a PC program here http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/htmlastext.html that allows Simple tables can be delimited by spaces, tab characters, commas, or CRLF so it's probably not what you need. Had a quick look, will give this a try, looks pretty promising from the quick read. And its free too! Tony Firshman wrote: ... and mis-configured tables. Beware - browsers will cope (successfully in the main) with all sorts of bad html. I know that to my cost when I took over Ann's craft association site. Not that the html previously used was bad, it was just optimised for Firefox and the previous webmaster didn't like IE so never checked it, despite the fact that by number, more people probably use IE than most other browsers. See an example of this (unless it's been fixed by now) by looking at Quanta website's home page in IE and Firefox to see how things can go wrong with IE! This is terrible of course, not just because it encourages bad coding, but also the programmer then does not see that the code is bad. I know what you mean. Luckily, what I want to do is pretty simple-minded so the program Norman suggested MIGHT just do enough for what I want. If it doesn't, I'll just write a simple routine to cope with the basic tables I want to process. Even if I can't make a 100% perefct conversion of the tables I'll content myself with producing something that needs less work at the QL end. ... much like I suppose Superbasic's habit of implicitly adding missing END statements. Yup. Just try throwing some of those programs at SBASIC, it'll soon tell you there's something missing, though not necessarily the correct point in the listing! Debugging some older SuperBASIC programs like that can take quite a while. Thanks, Dilwyn Jones ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] Tables
Dilwyn Jones wrote, on 31/Dec/10 14:36 | Dec31:
snip
... much like I suppose Superbasic's habit of implicitly adding missing
END statements.
Yup. Just try throwing some of those programs at SBASIC, it'll soon tell
you there's something missing, though not necessarily the correct point
in the listing!
Debugging some older SuperBASIC programs like that can take quite a while.
Much much worse is when you miss off a closing '}' in Perl (and probably
all other languages that use {} ). Then you get told by the parser that
there is a missing '}' at the end of the program!
I really like Python. It uses formatting rather than {}; characters.
You are *forced* to lay out the program intelligently, although I do try
for *all* my programming - makes debugging easier.
Why on earth is there a habit (in C68 as well I expect, dragging back
OnT) of not aligning '{' with '}'. I always do.
Tony
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t...@firshman.co.uk http://firshman.co.uk
Voice: +44(0)1442-828254 Fax: +44(0)1442-828255 Skype: tonyfirshman
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Re: [Ql-Users] Tables
On 31 Dec 2010, at 15:12, Tony Firshman wrote:
Dilwyn Jones wrote, on 31/Dec/10 14:36 | Dec31:
snip
... much like I suppose Superbasic's habit of implicitly adding missing
END statements.
Yup. Just try throwing some of those programs at SBASIC, it'll soon tell
you there's something missing, though not necessarily the correct point
in the listing!
Debugging some older SuperBASIC programs like that can take quite a while.
Much much worse is when you miss off a closing '}' in Perl (and probably all
other languages that use {} ). Then you get told by the parser that there is
a missing '}' at the end of the program!
I really like Python. It uses formatting rather than {}; characters.
You are *forced* to lay out the program intelligently, although I do try for
*all* my programming - makes debugging easier.
Why on earth is there a habit (in C68 as well I expect, dragging back OnT) of
not aligning '{' with '}'. I always do.
Use Assembler instead. Cleaner, faster, better.
George
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Re: [Ql-Users] Tables
-Original Message-
From: ql-users-boun...@lists.q-v-d.com [mailto:ql-users-
boun...@lists.q-v-d.com] On Behalf Of Tony Firshman
Sent: 31 December 2010 15:12
To: ql-us...@q-v-d.com
Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] Tables
Why on earth is there a habit (in C68 as well I expect, dragging back
OnT) of not aligning '{' with '}'. I always do.
In most languages this is normally a programmers preference. Some people
like the open braces to be at the end of a line with the close brace being
on at the end of the line that closes the block. Others (myself included)
prefer to put the opening brace on the next line by itself that the start of
block is more clearly isolated and then the closing brace also on its own
line lined up with the opening brace. You also get hybrid answers. That
is probably why the C indent program was produced so that you can process
an existing source file to suit your own layout preferences.
Dave Walker
Tel: +44 (0)1707 652791
Mob: +44 (0)7999 218953
Web: http://www.itimpi.com
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