A Perl program to generate a Table of Contents (ToC) for HTML documents.
For the latest information on htmltoc, see
<URL:http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/htmltoc.html>.
htmltoc allows you to specify "significant elements" that will be hyperlinked to in
a "Table of Contents" (ToC) for a given set of HTML documents.
Basically, the ToC generated is a multi-level level list containing links to the
significant elements. htmltoc inserts the links into the ToC to significant elements
at a level specified by the user.
If H1s are specified as level 1, than they appear in the first level list of the
ToC. If H2s are specified as a level 2, than they appear in a second level list
in the ToC.
See ToC Map File on how to tell htmltoc what are the significant elements and at
what level they should occur in the ToC.
In standard operation, the created ToC is sent to standard output, or to the file
specified by the -toc command-line option. For more information on controlling
the contents of the created ToC, see Formatting the ToC.
htmltoc also supports the ability to incorporate the ToC into the HTML
document itself via the -inline command-line option. This only works if a single
HTML file is being processed. See Inlining the ToC for more information.
In order for htmltoc to support linking to significant elements, htmltoc inserts
anchors into the significant elements. Since this requires modification of the
original HTML document(s), the originals are backed up with a ".org" suffix
appended to the filenames.
The following sections give more information on htmltoc:
htmltoc is invoked from a Unix shell, with the following syntax:
% htmltoc [options] file ... > tocfile
% htmltoc -toc tocfile [options] file ...
% htmltoc -inline [options] file
The following options are available:
-entrysep string
Use string as the entry separator for same level entries that are specified
not to use the LI element to list each entry. The default value is ", ". See
Formatting the ToC for more information.
-footer filename
Append filename, containing HTML markup, to the end of the ToC. This option is invalid when the -inline option is specified.
-header filename
Prepend filename, containing HTML markup, to the beginning of the ToC. The desired format of filename is slightly different if the ToC is being inlined, or is an external document. See Formatting the ToC and Inlining the ToC for more information.
-help
Short message giving all options available to htmltoc.
-inline
Insert ToC into the document being processed. This options is only valid if one HTML file is being processed. See Inlining the ToC for more information on this option.
-noorg
htmltoc normally backs up the original HTML files with a ".org"
extension. When this option is specified, htmltoc will remove the backup
files when done.
-ol
Put level 1 ToC entries in an order list (OL).
-prefix string
Use string as the prefix for ID values used in NAME/HREF attributes in
anchors (A) for linking ToC entries to the document(s). The default prefix
is "xtocid".
-quiet
htmltoc normally prints out informative messages on what it is doing.
This option suppress these messages.
-textonly
htmltoc by default, preserves HTML markup that exists in a significant
element to appear in the ToC. This options tells htmltoc to only use the
textual content of the ToC element. If this option is not specified, htmltoc
will still ignore the following tags: A, HR, P, IMG.
-title string
Set the title, (i.e. TITLE element) of the generated ToC document to string.
This option has no affect if the -header or -inline options are specified.
The default title is "Table of Contents".
-toc file
By default, the ToC is sent to standard output (unless the -inline option is
specified). This option explicitly tells htmltoc to output the ToC to file.
-toclabel string
Put string before ToC. This option has no effect if the -header option is
specified. The default ToC label is "<H1>Table of Contents</H1>".
-tocmap filename
Use filename as the ToC map file. By default, htmltoc only indexes H1s
and H2s. See ToC Map File for more information.
-useorg
This option tells htmltoc to use the ".org" backup files already existing.
In normal operation, htmltoc copies the files to be processed to the same
filenames with ".org" suffixes. Then, htmltoc reads the ".org" files to
find significant elements, and writes the new (modified) files to the
filenames without the ".org" suffix. This operation gives the appearance
that the files were editted in-place.
In other words, the -useorg option tells htmltoc not to perform the
initial copying of the files to ".org" files. However, if a ".org" file does not
exist for a given file, htmltoc will perform the initial copy operation.
Any arguments that are not part of the command-line options are treated as HTML files to be processed.
When htmltoc is running, htmltoc will normally output some informative
messages on what htmltoc is doing, or done. These messages can be suppressed
via the -quiet option.
The ToC map file allows you to tell htmltoc what significant elements to include in
the ToC, what level they should appear in the ToC, and any text to include before
and/or after the ToC entry. The format of the map file is as follows:
significant_element:level:sig_element_end:before_text,after_text significant_element:level:sig_element_end:before_text,after_text ...
Each line of the map file contains a series of fields separated by the `:' character.
The definition of each field is as follows:
The tag name of the significant element. Example values are H1, H2, H5.
This field is case-insensitive.
What level the significant element occupies in the ToC. This valid must be
numeric, and non-zero. If the value is negative, consective entries
represented by the significant_element will be separated by the value set by
-entrysep option.
The tag name that signifies the termination of the significant_element.
Example: The DT tag is a marker in HTML and not a container. However,
one can index DT sections of a definition list by using the value DD in the
sig_element_end field (this does assume that each DT has a DD following it).
If the sig_element_end is empty, then the corresponding end tag of the
specified significant_element is used. Example: If H1 is the
significant_element, than htmltoc looks for a "</H1>" for terminating the
significant_element.
Caution: the sig_element_end value should not contain the `<` and `>' tag
delimiters. If you want the sig_element_end to be the end tag of another
element than that of the significant_element, than use "/element_name".
The sig_element_end field is case-insensitive.
This is literal text that will be inserted before and/or after the ToC entry
for the given significant_element. The before_text is separated from the
after_text by the `,' character (which implies a comma cannot be contained
in the before/after text). See examples following for the use of this field.
In the map file, the first two fields MUST be specified.
Following are a few examples to help illustrate how a ToC map file works.
The following map file reflects the default mapping htmltoc uses if no map file is
explicitly specified:
# Default mapping for htmltoc # Comments can be inserted in the map file via the '#' character H1:1 # H1 are level 1 ToC entries H2:2 # H2 are level 2 ToC entries
The following map file makes use of the before/after text fields:
# A ToC map file that adds some formatting H1:1::<STRONG>,</STRONG> # Make level 1 ToC entries <STRONG> H2:2::<EM>,</EM> # Make level 2 entries <EM> H2:3 # Make level 3 entries as is
The following map file tries to index definition terms:
# A ToC map file that can work for Glossary type documents
H1:1
H2:2
DT:3:DD:<EM>,</EM> # Assumes document has a DD for each DT, otherwise ToC
# will get entries with alot of text.
The following map file demonstrates how one can bastardize the use HTML elements:
# A ToC map file that wraps ToC entries in header tags. This is illegal # HTML, but it looks pretty good in Mosaic. H1:1::<H3>,</H3> H2:2::<H4>,</H4> H3:3::<H5>,</H5>
The ToC Map File gives you control on how the ToC entries may look, but
htmltoc has other options to affect the final appearance of the ToC file created.
With the -header option, htmltoc will prepend the contents of the file before the
generated ToC. This allows you to have introductory text, or any other text, before
the ToC.
If you use the -header option, make sure the file specified contains the
opening HTML tag, the HEAD element (containing the TITLE element), and
the opening BODY tag. However, these tags/elements should not be in the
header file if the -inline options is used. See Inlining the ToC for
information on what the header file should contain for inlining the ToC.
With the -footer option, htmltoc will append the contents of the file after the
generated ToC.
If you use the -footer, make sure it includes the closing BODY and HTML
tags.
htmltoc will add the appropriate HTML markup to if either the -header or
-footer option is not specified to insure a valid HTML document is created for
the ToC.
If you do not want/need to deal with header, and footer, files, then htmltoc
allows you specify the title, -title option, of the ToC file; and it allows you to
specify a heading, or label, to put before ToC entries' list, the -toclabel option.
Both options have default values, see Usage for more information on each option.
htmltoc supports the ability to incorporating the ToC directly into an HTML
document via the -inline option. Inlining can only occur if one, and ONLY one,
HTML file is being processed, AND the HTML file contains an opening BODY tag.
The ToC generated is inserted right after the opening BODY tag, and before any
other HTML markup in the file. If the -header option is specified, then the
contents of the specified file are inserted after the BODY tag, but before the ToC.
Otherwise, htmltoc inserts the text specified by the -toclabel option.
The header file should not containing the beginning HTML tag and HEAD
element since the HTML file being processed should already contains
these tags/elements.
For the average user, the only thing to worry about is the -title and
-toclabel options. Everything else is provided for customizing the
behavior of htmltoc.
htmltoc is smart enough to detect anchors inside significant elements. If
the anchor defines the NAME attribute, htmltoc uses the value. Else, it
adds its own NAME attribute to the anchor.
htmltoc will not process files related to command-line options if they are
also specified to be processed for ToC significant elements. Example: The
command, "htmltoc -header header.html -toc toc.html
*.html" will cause header.html and toc.html to be included in the
HTML files to processed due to shell filename globbing of "*.html".
htmltoc is smart of enough to detect this, and exempt header.html
and toc.html from being processed for ToC significant elements.
The TITLE element is treated specially if specified in the ToC map file. It
is illegal to insert anchors (A) into TITLE elements. Therefore, htmltoc
will actually link to the filename itself instead of the TITLE element of the
document.
htmltoc will ignore significant elements if it does not contain any
non-whitespace characters. A warning message is generated if such a
condition exists.
htmltoc is not very efficient (memory and speed), and can be extremely
slow for large documents.
Invalid markup will be generated if a significant element is contained inside of an anchor. For example:
<A NAME="foo"><H1>The FOO command</H1></A>
will be converted to (if H1 is a significant element),
<A NAME="foo"><H1><A NAME="xtocidXXXXX">The</A> FOO
command</H1></A>
which is illegal since anchors cannot be nested.
It is better style to put anchor statements within the element to be anchored. For example, the following is preferred:
<H1><A NAME="foo">The FOO command</A></H1>
htmltoc will detect the "foo" NAME and use it.
NAME attributes without quotes are not recognized.
htmltoc will possibly not work correctly if the characters < and > are not
solely used to delimit HTML elements.
Hopefully, they have been fixed.