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Re: adding markup to tables that have none?

• To: "DuCharme, Bob (LNG-CHO)" <bob.ducharme@l...>
• Subject: Re: adding markup to tables that have none?
• From: Rick Jelliffe <ricko@a...>
• Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:18:02 +1000
• Cc: "'xml-dev@l...'" <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <FEF4858E8AB32D4EAC2CF2A7D85386EB0B254A5C@l...>
• References: <FEF4858E8AB32D4EAC2CF2A7D85386EB0B254A5C@l...>
• User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 (X11/20040502)

DuCharme, Bob (LNG-CHO) wrote:

> This is a tough problem, but it's as old as the use of markup in data 
> files, so I'm sure others have tackled it. When you have a table in 
> which all layout is achieved using spacing (which of course requires 
> the use of a fixed-width font) and you want to add HTML or CALS table 
> markup that identifies row and table entry boundaries, what kinds of 
> tools are out there besides importing to Excel and saving as XML?
>  
> I know that such tools would only work with simpler tables, because 
> spanned entries, wrapped entries, and other fancy table tricks would 
> cause problems, but I thought that there must be something out there, 
> and I can't find anything. Any suggestions?

Topologi Markup Editor has a block mode (control drag) that allows multiple
rectangular sections to be marked up.

1) Open table in editor. Make sure font is monospace.
2) Create pens for table, row, headers and cells.
3) Select cell pen, and control swip each column. Each cell in each line 
will be marked up individually.
4) Ditto for each row.
5) swipe table (not control) to mark it up with table tag.

Using this method, you can mark up a table with 1 drag per column + 2 drags.
Also, autoincrementing ids can be added at the same time. The idea is to 
provide
better editing primitives rather than optical recognition.

(The only gotcha is where the ends of lines are ragged. Rectangular 
selection is limited to
the smallest end-of-line position. If they are ragged, search and 
replace the newline with
a few spaces followed by a newline.)

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

• References:
  • adding markup to tables that have none?
    • From: "DuCharme, Bob (LNG-CHO)" <bob.ducharme@l...>

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