Miftran v0.7p3 2014-07-31
Miftran is a general purpose MIF (Framemaker's Maker Interchange
Format) translation program. It was designed primarily to translate
to HTML, but is flexible enough that it could be used for other
translations.
The latest version of miftran is most likely to be found at
http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~jimmc/ftp/miftran/
Miftran has the following features:
- Written in C (plus a few small sh scripts), easy to compile.
- Externally configurable with a single configuration (RC) file,
which can be customized for each MIF file to be translated.
ALL output text is controlled by contents of RC file.
- Based on paragraph and font tags (plus FWeight and FAngle).
- Generates Table of Contents (based on chapters, etc.) and Index
(based on Index markers), controlled by configuration file.
- Accepts a single MIF input file, but can produce multiple
output files (e.g. split by chapters, sections, etc.),
based on configuration file.
- Converts cross-references and hypertext links to HTML links,
based on configuration file.
- String substitution allows converting special characters.
Default template includes German, French, and Spanish characters.
- Handles anchored frames for inline images (but does not do
image format conversion).
- Handles flat tables.
- Handles simple variables (without <$xxx> stuff).
- Ignores hidden conditional text (when in text flow tagged HIDDEN).
- For advanced users, the C source can be relatively easily
customized to recognize additional MIF constructs.
- Freely redistributable with an MIT/X11 style copyright.
You can even put it into a commercial product and sell it if
you want, as long as you preserve and acknowledge our copyright.
- Library of preconfigured translation files to simplify customization.
Miftran has the following limitations:
- Only handles single MIF files. If your document is in multiple
MIF files, you can try concatenating them all into a single file,
and it might work for you (I have successfully done this).
Otherwise, you will have to process them one at a time. You can
probably make this work by munging the html/Makefile and the sh
scripts.
- Does not do format conversions of images in anchored frames.
- Does not handle embedded image files.
- May not handle all conditional text correctly.
- Does not handle <$xxx> stuff in variables.
- Does not handle paragraph formatting based on anything
other than tags.
To unpack miftran:
1. gunzip miftran.tgz
This will produce miftran.tar. gzip and gunzip are Gnu compression
programs, widely available. Use archie to find a site near you.
If you don't have archie, you can look in ftp://usc.edu/pub/gzip/.
2. tar xvf miftran.tar
This will create the directory "miftran" containing the kit.
3. cd miftran
This puts you into the directory, where you can compile and test.
To compile and test miftran:
1. Do a "make" in this directory. This will build the miftran program.
2. Cd to the html directory and do another "make". This will create
a set of HTML files, one per chapter, for the miftran.mif manual.
3. In the html directory, do a "make diff" to compare the html/*.html
files against the htmlref/*.html files. They should be identical.
4. Run your favorite HTML browser starting at TOC.html.
To use miftran on your own document:
1. Create a working directory for your html files.
2. Copy html/Makefile and html/miftran.rc file to your directory.
3. Edit your Makefile, set MIF_SOURCE and MIFTRAN_DIR.
4. Edit your miftran.rc, set the document title.
5. Do a "make font.list pgf.list" in your directory; this will make a
list of font and paragraph tags used in your document.
6. Edit your miftran.rc to change the <tagalias> lines to refer to
your font and paragraph tags as desired.
7. Do a "make" in your directory.
8. Run your favorite HTML browser starting at your TOC.html.
9. Customize your miftran.rc as desired and redo step 5-7 as needed.
Miftran has been compiled and run on the following machines (through 1997):
Dec Alpha OSF1
Decstation Ultrix 4.2a
HP700 HPUX 9.01, 9.03, 9.07
HP700 NextStep 3.3
Linux 1.0.8 with gcc 2.5.8 (Intel x86)
NeXT NextStep 3.2
RS6000 AIX 3.2.5
SCO ODT 3.0 (Intel x86)
SGI IRIX 5.1
Sparc Solaris 2.2 with gcc
Sparc Solaris 2.3, 2.4, 2.5
Sparc SunOS 4.1.3, 4.1.4
Unixware 1.1.1 (Intel x86)
Miftran 0.7p3 has been compiled on Fedora 19 (July 2014).
It has been used with Framemaker versions 3, 4, and 5.
If you use miftran, please send me email and let me know about it.
If you are using a machine or OS that is not in the above list,
please let me know, especially if there were any changes required
to get it to work.
For information about other MIF to HTML converters see:
- The Frame FAQ, posted to the frame newsgroup and available at
<URL:ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.answers/frame>
- CERN's html converter page
<URL:http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/Word_proc_filters.html>
Author: Jim McBeath
<miftran@j.jimmc.org>
<http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~jimmc/>