Utility: Etta - SGML Text to HTML Converter [VB6]

Full source and precompiled binary files are provided here. The attached ZIP archive was scanned with AVG Free 2012 and should prove virus-free.

Most of the info below can be found in the readme.txt document included in the archive.

Description
Etta (from "Rosetta Stone") is a pair of utilities (GUI and batch) for converting SGML documents (such as many U.S. Library of Congress books available online for downloading) into usable HTML documents. There is a dearth of working tools for consumer and low-end viewing and conversion of SGML-encoded documents. Etta is an attempt to fill this gap in SGML support.

The goal here is not to provide extremely generalized or "complete" SGML conversions or to support on-the-fly Web back-end functionality. Instead Etta attempts to handle the more limited problem of turning typical SGML-encoded "books" into another format for which there is widespread software support.

Etta conversions are rough, as its results will demonstrate. But it can be useful in converting such SGML documents into forms suitable for offline e-reading. If nothing else Etta may get you 98% of the way to a finished result, saving huge amounts of time over fully manual conversion attempts - even if you do have to go in and tweak things manually after conversion.

Etta doesn't attempt to guide its conversion using SGML DTDs or conversion to XML followed by XSL transformation, etc. Instead Etta takes a simple pragmatic approach guided by a simple "specsfile" along with a corresponding HTML stylesheet that it embeds in the output HTML file.

Features

• Both GUI Etta.exe and command line EttaBatch.exe utilities are included.
• Conversion process is driven by an "Etta specs" file along with an HTML styles block file, permitting many adjustments to be made without altering Etta's code. A default specsfile and stylesfile are included.
• Alternate specsfiles and stylesfiles can be specified at runtime. There is no need to alter the defaults and you can have as many sets of these files as you need.

Author
Bob Riemersma

System Requirements
Windows 95B (or later) with IE 4.0 Desktop Update, or Windows 98 or later.

Tested on:

• Windows 95 OSR2 with Desktop Update,
• Windows XP SP3,
• Windows Vista SP2, and
• Windows 7 SP1.

No special memory or disk requirements. Memory use is kept low to accommodate even very old PCs. Etta itself has a very small disk footprint, and aside from that enough disk for the input and output files is needed.

The readme.txt document contain run instructions, recompiling instructions, and details of the specsfile and stylesfile contents.

License
Unencumbered public domain freeware. May be used by anyone in whole or in part in either source or binary forms. No guarantees or support offered. Etta is made available as-is for use at your own discretion.

A serious attempt has been made to debug Etta/EttaBatch but errors may still exist.