Hardy2HTML Help

Browsing the HTML files

If you have a browser with frames, such as Netscape 2.x, your model will be divided into three frames.

The upper-most frame displays the main card information, such as a diagram or text.
The bottom-left frame contains the table of contents (all cards).
The bottom-right frame contains a variety of information, depending on what the user has selected. Initially, it shows this on-line help.

If you have a non-frame browser, such as Mosaic or Internet Explorer, then all information is shown in one window, and cards will have more, scrollable information instead of being divided up.

The contents page of a report is always called top-level.html. The contents page shows the Hardy card hierarchy with the top card first, with child cards shown indented under their parents.

A diagram card is depicted using an inline image map. Each node is clickable, if using a browser which supports inline image maps.

Click on the top half of the node to go to an 'expansion' card associated with the node;
click on the bottom half of the node to view details of that node.

In addition to the clickable image, there is a list of nodes with links to their expansions and details, so if your browser cannot cope with inline image maps, you may use these textual links to view the same information.

You can get to the contents via a link on each card page.

Installing the Hardy2HTML converter

This converter is available from AIAI and currently works on Windows 95 only.

Unarchive the Hardy2HTML distribution into a suitable directory. It contains the file dcview21.zip, which is a Windows bitmap to GIF converter needed by Hardy2HTML. Unzip this into a separate directory and copy cview.exe and cview.pif to a location in your PATH, where it will be found when run by Hardy. Your Windows directory will do.

Your diagrams.def file should be edited to insert a menu item for document translation:

custom(custom_menu_name = "&Translation",
  custom_menu_strings = ["Translate to &HTML"]).

It is recommended that you use Hardy for Windows 95, version 1.82 or later.

Using the Hardy2HTML converter

Run Hardy and batch the file loader.clp in the Hardy2HTML distribution, or run Hardy with -clips loader.clp.

The Hardy control window will have a new Translation menu. Load your Hardy index or diagram file, and select Translate to HTML from the Translation menu. You are presented with a preferences dialog with the following text fields:

Destination directory. This is the directory which the HTML files will be written to. Use a new directory for each separate report.
Standard document directory. This is the directory containing standard document files such as help.htm, noexp.htm which remain constant for each report. Hardy2HTML will copy the files from this directory to the destination directory. In the Hardy2HTML distribution, the directory is called standard.
Title. The title which will appear on the front page.
Author. The name(s) of the author(s).
Object identifier attribute. The Hardy diagram node attribute which will be used to identify nodes: usually name, label or id.

Fill these fields in, and press OK or Cancel to abort. If OK is pressed, a progress dialog should appear. Eventually a DOS box should appear, running cview.exe to convert the diagram bitmaps. If there is a problem at this point, you probably have not installed cview.exe correctly. If all is well, press a key to close the DOS box and then press OK in the dialog that appeared simultaneously with the DOS box.

You should now have a set of HTML and GIF files in your destination directory.

Note that the preferences you filled in will be saved for next time in the file hardyhtm.ini in your Windows directory.

Files generated

These are the files generated by Hardy2HTML. Some of them are user-replacable, such as help.htm and the GIF files which can be tailored according to user preference.

card-N.html for each card. N is the integer identifier of the card. This is used by non-frame enabled browsers, and contains more (scrollable) information than the file used for frame-enabled browsers.
card-N-frame.html for each card. N is the integer identifier of the card. This is the card contents for use by frame-enabled browsers.
card-N-nodes.html for each card. N is the integer identifier of the card. This is the list of nodes for use by frame-enabled browsers.
card-N-links.html for each card. N is the integer identifier of the card. This is the list of further links for use by frame-enabled browsers.
node-details-N-M.html for each node image. N is the integer identifier of the card, M is the node image identifier.
diagN.gif for each diagram. N is the integer identifier of the card.
top-level.html, the contents page for the report. Works for all browsers, frame-enhanced or not.
top-level-frame.html, the actual contents page used by frame-enabled browsers.
help.html, the help file for the report (copied from standard/help.htm).
noexp.html, the file shown when the user has clicked on a node for which there is no expansion (copied from standard/noexp.htm).
contents.gif, the image used to display the word `Contents'.
bg.gif, the background image used by non-frame browsers.
bg-1.gif, the background image used by frame-enabled browsers for the uppermost frame.
bg-2.gif, the background image used by frame-enabled browsers for the contents frame.
bg-3.gif, the background image used by frame-enabled browsers for the bottom-right (information) frame.

Hardy2HTML restrictions

Cards other than diagram and text are not supported. There is untested provision for hypertext cards that use the standard block types and fonts.

Arc details are not shown since they were not required for the application Hardy2HTML was written to support.

Generation of HTML is currently restricted to Windows 95 for the following reasons:

No automatic bitmap-saving support is available on UNIX versions of Hardy.
Long filenames are generated, so Windows 3.1 is unsuitable.

Hardy to HTML converter, (c) AIAI, University of Edinburgh, 1996