XTML was created for one basic purpose: To create HTML Tables quickly
and easily. If you have data in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, XTML can
convert it into a table ready for inclusion in your web site - with one
command. You can use the normal excel formatting commands to assign font
styles and text alignment, and XTML will produce the necessary HTML tags
to reproduce the table on the web. The resulting HTML source is saved into
a text file, where you can edit and fine-tune it just as you would any of
your other web files.
Microsoft Excel version 5.0 or later (Macintosh or Windows versions).
7 bucks. This is shareware :-)
Please send cash, check or money order for $7.00 (US) to:
Ken Sayward
155 Flanders Rd
Niantic, CT 06333
USA
NEW: If you wish to pay via credit card, foreign currency, via email or fax, then please use the included Register program. This uses the Kagi shareware registration service to provide simple and flexible shareware payment options.
I did spend quite a bit of time writing this to be as flexible as possible;
If you use it for more than a few days, please register it. If you
send me your email address along with the 7 bucks, I'll make sure you get
notification of the latest versions when anything changes.
That's easy. Download it now!
Macintosh - 'XTML Add-In' is an Add-in module for Microsoft Excel
v5.0 or later. Just drop it in the 'Excel Startup Folder (5)' folder inside
your preferences folder within the system folder. If you don't have a folder
called 'Excel Startup Folder (5)', simply make one and drop the XTML Add-in
file into it.
Windows - 'XTML.XLA' is an Add-in module for Microsoft Excel v5.0
or later. Just drop it in the '\XLStart' subdirectory inside your Excel
5 directory.
Note that the add-in file is binary compatible across Mac and Windows
platforms. For Macintosh, the suggested name is "XTML Add-In"; for
Windows, the suggested name is "XTML.XLA" (actually, you can name the
add-in file anything you want, subject to the restrictions of your
operating system).
That's it. The next time you launch Excel, you'll have a new item in the
'Tools' menu, called "XTML", with a few subitems (explained below).
1) Create your spreadsheet table in Excel (what better place to maintain
tabular data?)
2) Format the cells if necessary.
XTML will honor the following, on a cell-by-cell basis:
Input Range. The range of excel cells you would like to create
HTML source for. Excel will do a best guess based on the active cell when
you select "Convert to HTML Table" from the menu. You can change
the input range by selecting the cells you wish to work with, while the
dialog box is open.
Window Title. The text which will appear in the window title when
the page is viewed with a web browser. The default is the name of the Excel
worksheet.
Table Caption. The text which will appear above the table, with <caption>
& <h2> tags. The default is the name of the Excel worksheet. You
can change the header tags to whatever you'd like in the resulting .html
file. It seemed to me that <h1> was a bit of overkill.
Output Filename. The filename for the resulting text file. The default
is the name of the Excel worksheet, with ".html" appended to it.
Note: the file will be automatically saved to the current active folder
as shown in Excel when you do a 'save as' or 'open'.
Header and Cell Formatting. Determines the look of the resulting
HTML source.
XTML v1.1.0 and higher maintains a file in your 'preferences' folder
called 'XTML Prefs' (in the Windows version, the prefs file is called 'XTMLPREF.txt'
and is stored in the same directory as the Excel application file). This
file is created automatically the first time you select one of the XTML
menu items. It is initially created with default values, but you can change
them as follows. Select 'Preferences' from the 'XTML' pop-up menu in the
'Tools' menu. You'll see the following dialog:
XTML Preferences explained
Horizontal Alignment. Check this box to tell XTML to preserve the alignment
of cells as formatted in Excel.
Column widths. Check this box to tell XTML to use a <td
width="x%"> tag. This tag is added in the first table row
which does not have any COLSPAN tags. XTML calculates the width of each
column as a percentage of the total table width. Note that despite all
the column width formatting you might use in your HTML, web browsers
often muck around with the column widths anyway. However, this option
does give you some control.
Numbers default to right aligned. Check this box to tell XTML to
automatically tag numeric cells as right aligned, unless another alignment
has been applied to the cell.
Numeric Formats. Check this box to tell XTML to preserve the formatting
of numeric cells, such as currency, commas, percentages, etc.
Font Styles. Check these boxes to tell XTML to preserve the font
style of cells as formatted in Excel. In addition, you can specify which
tags to use for the (currently) three styles supported. The defaults are
shown in the dialog box above.
Caution:If you change the tags for bolditalic, and you still use
two different tags (like <b><i>), be careful to get the closing
tags in the correct order.
Display file format warnings after processing. Check this box so
that XTML will remind the user about the fact that output files must be
saved as 'formatted text (space delimited)'. If this is unchecked, no warning
dialogs will be displayed.
Reset Defaults. Click this button to reset the default values for
all options in this dialog box.
The version history was getting too long, so I separated into a Release
Notes page of its own.
Pretty soon (if I can do this without adding too much processing overhead):
·Preserve vertical alignment (especially now that XTML handles carriage returns within cells).
·An option to 'compact' the output HTML code to reduce all the carriage returns.
·This would result in smaller HTML files, but they would be less readable.
· Set 'row-level' alignment in the <tr> tags, if it would reduce
the repetition in the <td> tags.
A little later (maybe):
· Handle 'rowspan'
· Nested tables.
The XTML software is shareware. Permission is hereby granted for non-commercial distribution of unmodified copies of this software, so long as this documentation is included. For information about including this software on compilation CD-ROMs or disks, please contact the author.
Copyright ©1995, by Ken Sayward. All rights reserved.
Please send questions, comments and suggestions to Sayward@kagi.com
Last Edited: December 15, 1995