Mif to XML/HTML conversion w/o FrameMaker

[rombanks]

Hello fellows,

Are you aware of any way to convert a Mif file to HTML outside of Framemaker? In the past, there were attempts to create tools that convert Mifs to XML, but they weren't really successful.

Thank you for your suggestions in advance!

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Have you explored using Mif2Go?

[rombanks]

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for your response!

AFAIK, Mif2Go is an FM plugin. I'd like to convert Mifs to HTML without running Framemaker (and preferably in Linux/Unix environment).

Thanks!

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Yes, I realized that, but I suspect it’s working via FM > MIF > MIF2Go > HTML

[rombanks]

Yes, but again, I don't have FM on a Linux machine....

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Probably not necessary – AFAIK, MIF2Go acts upon the MIF produced from FM to create HTML based on the rules you establish in some ini file. You already have the MIF files, right? I’m sure that dumping them into some watched MIF2Go folder would trigger their conversion. You need to do some research on the mif2go.com site with their help files.

[rombanks]

I'll check, thanks! In any case, Mif2go is a Win application.

[Bob_Niland]

> ... and preferably in Linux/Unix environment

In case you missed the memo from earlier this week, MIF2go is open source now, so you can port it yourself.

How hard could it be?

[rombanks]

Very sad memo. I'll leave the porting task to such brilliant and talented people as Jeremy...

[FieryPantone]

Oh, easy-peasy … all you need is a programmer, someone who understands FM source and something like sed, awk or perl <roflwlia> It's amazing just how much information shows up in a .mif file – I've just opened one I was using yesterday, and by searching for <String I see that there are 125 lines of 'content' (fewer, actually, since some of them are for headers and footers) in a file of 126671 lines.

You might get something recognisable to use as a starting-point – though without checking I'm not sure how far it would get you with tables – by pulling out PgfTag and String entries, but I suspect the overall answer to "any way to …" may still be "start with a good text editor and {beverage of choice}". Good luck!