exporting formatted text

I have long wrestled with this old problem of trying to get bold,
italic etc. formatting out of FileMaker and into other file formats,
specifically HTML and Quark Xpress tags. There used to be a FMP
extension called DiStyler which had a fair crack at it but was buggy
and then died; I'm surprised no-one else has come up with an extension
as (I presume) there must be some demand.
Currently I am using GetAsCSS function to mark up text for exporting
which then needs copious massaging with BBEdit under the control of
AppleScript; obviously Mac-only, and BBEdit is expensive if this is
all it is being used for.
So I am about to embark on an attempt to re-write the text-massaging
in Perl (free, cross-platform and probably much quicker) which can be
invoked using the wonderful Shell plug-in from Abstrakt. I know next
to nothing about Perl programming, so before I start learning, does
anyone have any better ideas? eg. is there any way to do regexp
replacements within FMP so that there is no need for any external
program?

Re: exporting formatted text

In article <1190827448.954825.135310@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
braedsjaa@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

> I have long wrestled with this old problem of trying to get bold,
> italic etc. formatting out of FileMaker and into other file formats,
> specifically HTML and Quark Xpress tags. There used to be a FMP
> extension called DiStyler which had a fair crack at it but was buggy
> and then died; I'm surprised no-one else has come up with an extension
> as (I presume) there must be some demand.
> Currently I am using GetAsCSS function to mark up text for exporting
> which then needs copious massaging with BBEdit under the control of
> AppleScript; obviously Mac-only, and BBEdit is expensive if this is
> all it is being used for.
> So I am about to embark on an attempt to re-write the text-massaging
> in Perl (free, cross-platform and probably much quicker) which can be
> invoked using the wonderful Shell plug-in from Abstrakt. I know next
> to nothing about Perl programming, so before I start learning, does
> anyone have any better ideas? eg. is there any way to do regexp
> replacements within FMP so that there is no need for any external
> program?

I use FM's built-in convert to HTML function, creating a hidden
calculated field that's automatically filled with an HTML version of the
visible text field. This still has to be massaged--you can do it with
ordinary text manipulation in Applescript but I use the Satimage OSAX
replace function--to get rid of SPAN tags and such that it throws in.

No idea how to get from there to Quark.

Re: exporting formatted text

---
schreef in bericht
news:1190827448.954825.135310@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com.. .
>I have long wrestled with this old problem of trying to get bold,
> italic etc. formatting out of FileMaker and into other file formats,
> specifically HTML and Quark Xpress tags. There used to be a FMP
> extension called DiStyler which had a fair crack at it but was buggy
> and then died; I'm surprised no-one else has come up with an extension
> as (I presume) there must be some demand.
> Currently I am using GetAsCSS function to mark up text for exporting
> which then needs copious massaging with BBEdit under the control of
> AppleScript; obviously Mac-only, and BBEdit is expensive if this is
> all it is being used for.
> So I am about to embark on an attempt to re-write the text-massaging
> in Perl (free, cross-platform and probably much quicker) which can be
> invoked using the wonderful Shell plug-in from Abstrakt. I know next
> to nothing about Perl programming, so before I start learning, does
> anyone have any better ideas? eg. is there any way to do regexp
> replacements within FMP so that there is no need for any external
> program?
>

Hello Braedsjaa,

some time ago I found a solution to this problem that might still be
workable for you:

http://www.tekstotaal.com/c.fmp.font.grabbing.html

Quark tags could be constructed from calc fields I guess.


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Met vriendelijke groet / Mit freundlichen Gruessen / With kind regards
Christoph Bouthillier
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