4. From Word to HTML

The solution developed within the i-Structures project of the Swiss Virtual Campus takes a practical approach to the problem of repeatedly creating material for the web. Considering that most authors, and this is the case for all authors within the project, use Microsoft Word for basic text-processing, a set of macro was written to automatically convert the content of a Word document into a series of related web pages. These web pages can then be evaluated and, if it is not satisfactory, the material can be further edited in Word by the author. The control of the document thus never really leaves the author, except for the short period of time during which it gets processed into web pages.

This process allows a very simple and transparent editing process for the material: the Word file contains all text, links and pictures for the pages. Special paragraph styles are used to identify various parts of the lesson: text, lists, questions, figures and tables. Additional linked material, such as videos, sounds, applets etc. are introduced within the word file as snippets of HTML code. Careful color-coding of the various styles makes it very easy for “normal authors” not to alter this code, which preserves it for the next translation.

4.1. Example

The two figures below show a part of the screen as it is seen when using the word-processing program, and then the resulting appearance of the web page. The page itself is rendered using a specially developed HTML style sheet. The author does not see a WYSIWYG version of the future web page, but, since the translation process occurs rapidly, it is possible to frequently control the result of the translation. Experience shows that only a couple adjustments are needed to obtain a suitable result, as for instance the introduction of a “No break” instruction to avoid separating parts of the material that need to be shown together.

Example of a Word document using the special styles

Web appearance of the fragment of text from the previous figure