xxx2lout version 0.02

SUMMARY

The following little perl programs are included:
* html2lout - Converts HTML to lout
* pod2lout  - Converts pod to lout
* txt2lout  - Converts plain text to lout
* perl2lout - Converts perl programs to lout

They are supported by two modules:
* Lout.pm - this provides the txt2lout function used by the first three
            converters, and a supporting set_txt2lout function; and
* HTML/LoutParser.pm - this provides the routines for the hooks in the 
                       HTML/Parser.pm module.

txt2lout can be used as a nice filter, say in vi, with ".,$!txt2lout -w 0" for
example.

html2lout (i.e. HTML/LoutParser.pm) now does tables - its very crude and
simple and you'll probably have to hand tweak, but its a start. It doesn't
deal with &entities; very well since it relies on HTML/Parser.pm to translate
them and uses each 8-bit character as is; the awk html2lout converts entities
directly into {@Char entity}'s which is what I should do.

Even if they don't give you exactly the results you want they may be enough to
knock some source text into a usable form.

CHANGES

0.01    First version.
0.02    Added some code to handle html tables in html2lout; also made
        LoutParser a first class object with some parameters to influence
        its behaviour.

INSTALLING

As for installing just create a directory somewhere and unzip and untar the 
lot, e.g.

tar xvfz xxx2lout-VERSION.tar.gz

or

gunzip xxx2lout-VERSION.tar.gz
tar xvf xxx2lout-VERSION.tar

then either put this directory in your PATH or create some soft links from
somewhere on your path to the xxx2lout scripts you want.

Note: You must have Perl 5.004 or later; and to use html2lout you must have
HTML::Parser which comes in the libwww-perl library.

LICENCE

These are quick scripts, but if you have comments, improvements etc send them
to <mark@chest.ac.uk> with 'xxx2lout' in the subject line.

Copyright (c) 1999 Mark Summerfield. All Rights Reserved.
May be used/distributed under the same terms as Perl itself.
