U.S. Documents Received
in the Blume Library, 1991--

Procedures

The following general steps describe how I convert a Dbase III documents check-in file to an HTML-coded file that can be read by a WWW browser. The word processing program I use is WordPerfect 7; I assume other word processors have similar features:

  1. In Dbase, convert the .dbf file to a text (.txt) file. This is done using the "set alternate" command. For example, type

    then run a program that lists the contents of the file as you want them displayed. Using the "set alternate" command stores all keyboard entries and screen displays to the filename you specified.

  2. In WordPerfect, edit the text file created in step 1 if necessary (there may be some commands or other keystrokes at the top or bottom of the file since "set alternate" records keystrokes as well as displayed characters).
  3. Use WordPerfect's "publish" feature to convert the text file to an HTML file. (Click on FILE, PUBLISH TO and HTML.)
  4. Call the HTML file up in WordPerfect again, but be sure to select ASCII DOS TEXT as the display option. (The default will be HTML. BTW, I think the wording of this dialog box in WordPerfect is misleading; it says "convert file format from...." when what it's really doing is letting you decide which format to display the file in.)
  5. Perform whatever search-and-replace options are necessary to get the file formatted the way you want (you may not need to do any).

These steps convert the basic file to HTML. I also prepared a series of headers and footers that introduce the files, provide for navigation among them, and warn users about potential pitfalls. The files themselves need to be updated more or less frequently, but carefully constructed headers and footers can be just plugged into the updated file as is.

If you have any questions, I will try to answer them, although this is very much a seat-of-the- pants project and I may not be able to help with other set-ups or word processing programs. If you are using WordPerfect 7 and want to know the specific search-and-replace procedure I use, let me know. My name is Kathy Amen and my email address is: kamen@stmarytx.edu.