Inserting/importing tables

[Splodge]

My fist HTML validator was Hotmetal and it had some nice features (and some nasty bugs). Upon its demise I changed to CSE and though I've looked though the product many times and cannot find a way to import a simple table (be it csv or xls) into an html table like Hotmetal could. Can it be done? If not can you add the feature? Exporting an xls to html via Excel is a joke when all I want is simple and slick, non-css code. Also checkout how Hotmetal allowed you to mass-edit any table property - it was cool.

If CSE will not support table insert does anyone know a product which does?

[Albert Wiersch]

Hello,

Sorry, CSE HTML Validator does not have a table import feature.

As for adding that feature, it would be nice, but it's an editor feature and most resources go to improving the validator engine part of the program because it is meant to be a great validator... so the editor side is not as full featured. However, I will be happy to make a note of your suggestion.

Hopefully someone can recommend another editing tool that can do what you want. I'm sure there must be one, but I can't think of one that has a feature like what you want.

[CaryD]

PSPad seems to support this under the menu "HTML > Import from CSV". I've never tried this so I don't know how well it works.

[Lou]

Exporting an xls to html via Excel is a joke when all I want is simple and slick, non-css code.
If CSE will not support table insert does anyone know a product which does?

I agree Microsoft products "write" bad html. But this is the approch I used. Its not pretty but then again it works.

Built the spreadsheets and graphs in Excel and save.
Open a new word document and select <Insert> <Object>.
Select Excel, open your spreadsheet. and insert a chart.
Then <save as> document as an '.htm' file.

Now in the directory where the doc was saved there is a new directory "docname_files". In it are files like image001.gif etc.

Throw the .htm away but keep the .gif files. There is one for each chart included in the word document.

Write your own HTML and include the .gif charts. (of course you will give the .gifs a more meaningful name.)

It was just as easy for me to build my own HTML tables. But you should be able to include parts of the spreadsheet in a word document and export that too.

Hope this helps Lou

[MikeGale]

Depends on what you're happy doing, but here's one approach.

Get information as csv. Convert to a table with code. When doing this sort of thing I tend to then put it on the clipboard and paste it in.

A Google search gave me this as the first find:

http://www.codeave.com/asp/code.asp?u_log=101

(I haven't used it but it's an ASP page that kicks out the X/HTML.)

The approach could be used with ASP, compiled VB.NET/C#/whatever, Ruby ... Whatever you're comfortable with. With free versions of some of these tools it pretty easy to get started.

In general I find a little XHTML generator can save time in many, many ways and is easy to do. (The beauty is that you control what happens so you can bend it to your will.)

[Splodge]

PSPad seems to support this under the menu "HTML > Import from CSV". I've never tried this so I don't know how well it works.

Many thanks - I tried PSPad and it works fine. The table it generates is pure and simple HTML. It also has another feature I miss from HotMetal - if you click on an HTML element - e.g. td - it highlights what it thinks is the correcponding /td which makes debugging coding so much easier.

I'll keep on evaluating PSPad as it looks as if it has most of the features I need - but what is its code validating like? As good as CSE?

[CaryD]

It looks like PSPad uses TiDy which I don't like nearly as much as CSE's regular or nsglms validation.