Export As WebSite Improvements...

[Eingang]

I think Export as WebSite leaves a lot to be desired in terms of what’s produced. I didn’t try it with anything particularly complex, but I immediately noticed several things:

1. External links embedded in the RTF weren’t preserved.
2. Tabulated text wasn’t preserved by placing it into

    or some other kind of appropriate container or converting it to a proper HTML table.

3. Images weren’t converted into something appropriate for the web. I ended up with a folder full of PICTs. Not too helpful!
4. It produces a whackload of HTML mark-up, probably more than necessary.

I’m not really that surprised about 2 and 4. 1 and 3 had me particularly gobsmacked. Or maybe I missed something about configuring things?

[Bill_DeVille]

@Eingang

I think Export as WebSite leaves a lot to be desired in terms of what’s produced. I didn’t try it with anything particularly complex, but I immediately noticed several things:

1. External links embedded in the RTF weren’t preserved.
2. Tabulated text wasn’t preserved by placing it into

    or some other kind of appropriate container or converting it to a proper HTML table.

3. Images weren’t converted into something appropriate for the web. I ended up with a folder full of PICTs. Not too helpful!
4. It produces a whackload of HTML mark-up, probably more than necessary.

I’m not really that surprised about 2 and 4. 1 and 3 had me particularly gobsmacked. Or maybe I missed something about configuring things?

Eingang:

As with all features, Export as WebSite will be reviewed and evaluated over time, especially user comments on how it should work.

Note that the current feature does a pretty good job with one type of structured content, a structure based on hyperlinks between document components.

See, e.g., http://homepage.mac.com/wbdeville/DT_Tutorial_Export/Welcome%20to%20DEVONthink%20Pro.html. This was a “one click” conversion of a very early version of the DT Pro Tutorial Database.

[cgrunenberg]

@Eingang

1. External links embedded in the RTF weren’t preserved.

They should be preserved if the links point either to a file/Internet URL or if the links are cross links and the destination is also (!!!) exported.

2. Tabulated text wasn’t preserved by placing it into

    or some other kind of appropriate container or converting it to a proper HTML table.

The website export support rich text tables & enumerations/lists of Tiger which should be sufficient for basic formatting.

3. Images weren’t converted into something appropriate for the web. I ended up with a folder full of PICTs. Not too helpful!

That will be improved in the next release.

[Eingang]

@cgrunenberg

@Eingang

1. External links embedded in the RTF weren’t preserved.

They should be preserved if the links point either to a file/Internet URL or if the links are cross links and the destination is also (!!!) exported.

I agree that they should but they definitely weren’t. I didn’t get any links at all and I was very surprised about that. Bill mentioned the tutorial thing. I actually discovered a message from him about that after I’d posted my message here (but before his response) and then I wondered if it just did internal links only. But you’re saying it should do both. I’ll try it again in 1.0.2 and see what happens.

@cgrunenberg

@Eingang

2. Tabulated text wasn’t preserved by placing it into

    or some other kind of appropriate container or converting it to a proper HTML table.

The website export support rich text tables & enumerations/lists of Tiger which should be sufficient for basic formatting.

I commented on this elsewhere (a thread about tables and DT, I think). I suspected that might be the case, but I didn’t have an easy way to convert my tabulated text into a table. Having since poked around the AppleScript, I’m not sure I can even write an AppleScript to do it in DT. I think it’s sensible for Rich Text tables to be exported as HTML tables, but it probably wouldn’t hurt, even if it meant we had to assign a style to that chunk of text, to be able to export a chunk in a

 container.  I know pre elements are deprecated, but short of converting tabs to spaces and embedding the text in mono-spaced HTML block element (div), I can’t think of a way to easily preserve that kind of formatting.



@cgrunenberg


@Eingang

Images weren’t converted into something appropriate for the web.  I ended up with a folder full of PICTs.  Not too helpful!



That will be improved in the next release.


Excellent!  Thanks!

[cgrunenberg]

@Eingang

I know pre elements are deprecated, but short of converting tabs to spaces and embedding the text in mono-spaced HTML block element (div), I can’t think of a way to easily preserve that kind of formatting.

One alternative is to use the ruler as the tabs are probably just used to indent lines - just remove the tabs and set the left margin. The website export uses this information (and paragraph spacing too).