xxx2lout version 1.02

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 which can be used by perl programmers doing
their own lout processing:
* Lout.pm - this provides the txt2lout function used by the first three
            converters, and a supporting set_option function; it also
            provides htmlentity2lout used by html2lout.
* 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. 

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.
0.03    Improved html2lout - if multiple fonts given, choses just the last one
        and inserts Base. Insert empty objects {} in front of @B, @I etc to
        ensure they don't collide with preceeding words. Corrections to smart
        quotes applied. Now use Text::Wrap to wrap long lines. Added code to
        handle more tags.
1.00    First documented version. Improved html2lout - better table handling 
        (but still very basic). No longer puts @LP's all over the place, so
        everything comes out better, including lists. Now &entity;'s are
        converted to {@Char entity}'s. More options added to control
        commenting of handled and unhandled tags. More tags handled. Parser
        object data bugs sorted. All files now have their own pod
        documentation.
1.01    Added @CNP as an option '-cnp' for <H1> and <H2>'s which is on by
        default. Thanks to David Duffy <davidD@qimr.edu.au> for this 
        suggestion.
1.02    Added non-standard tags =title, =head3 and =head4 to pod2lout.
        pod2lout can now be used on perl scripts and modules without formality
        to produce lout from their pod alone.


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 and Text::Wrap which comes
with Perl.

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.