This software is (c) John A Fotheringham 1998

AscToTab 2.3 is free.  You may copy this software far and
wide, and tell all your friends how good it is.  Just make 
sure that you keep this file with it, so people know who to 
blam^H^H^H^H thank for it.  Where possible, distribute the
original .zip file with all the documentation enclosed.

You may not charge for this software - that's *my* job :)
If you wish to place this software on CD you must seek the 
author's permission by emailing your intentions to
jaf@yrl.co.uk.  This is primarily to make sure you have the
most recent version.

For up to date information on this software, visit the 
home page at

	http://www.yrl.co.uk/~jaf/asctotab.html


Notes on the release 2.3 of AscToTab
====================================

Thank you for downloading the AscToTab conversion software.  
AscToTab will convert a _plain_ text file containing a table 
into a fully-fledged HTML table.  It does this by analysing
the spaces and layout of your file to see where the columns
are, and how many lines go in each cell.  If vertical bars
are present, these may also be interpreted as column
separators.

We've included a sample file tab1.txt to show you what we 
mean.  It looks a bit like this

	                Shot  Fire     Damage vs. Armor 
	Weapon     Type Range Rate  None  Wood Light Heavy
	--------------------------------------------------
	Colt 45    HP   5.75  180   50    2     2     2
	AA Gun     AP   6     90    --    --    18    25
	Vulcan     SA   5     22    40    20    24    10
	Maverick   AP   6     300   15    37    37    50
	Fireball   Fire 4     18    112   125   75    31
	Flamer     Fire 3.5   18    63    70    42    17
	Chaingun   SA   5     300   40    20    24    10

This example demonstrates how AscToTab

	- correctly detects the columns
	- correctly detects the heading (because
	  it is underlined)
	- right-aligns numerical data
	- correctly detects that "Damage vs Armour" spans
	  4 columns.

Note, AscToTab does not accept comma-separated or 
Tab-separarted lists as exported from excel, there are other
existing tools that do that.  Tabs are interpreted by 
AscToTab as positioning the text on the next 8-character 
boundary.  You have been warned.

AscToTab has evolved out of ongoing development of the more 
general conversion utility AscToHTM.  AscToTab represents
a specialised subset of the functionality offered by AscToHTM.

AscToHTM is offered as shareware, and thus AscToTab may be
thought of as a "free sample" of AscToHTM.  AscToHTM has 
been awarded 5 stars by ZDNet, the first (and only?) 
text to HTML converter to gain this, their highest award.

AscToTab 2.3 represents a small change over version 1.1.  The
reason for the large change in version number is to 
synchronize version numbers with AscToHTM 2.3.  From now
on AscToTab will only be developed and released as and when
AscToHTM is.  Presently a minor release of AscToHTM occurs
every 2-3 months.

Because of the now-common interface shared between the two 
programs, AscToTab now supports wildcards and "policy" files.
This will allow you to set document titles, colours and much
more.  See the documentation for fuller details.  You really
won't get the full benefit unless you do :)


Locating AscToTab on the Web
----------------------------

The AscToTab home page is currently

	http://www.yrl.co.uk/~jaf/AscToTab.html

The on-line documentation for the current version can be 
found at

      	http://www.yrl.co.uk/~jaf/doco/a2tdoco.html

A copy of that file is included in this .ZIP file

The latest downloads can be found at

      	http://www.yrl.co.uk/~jaf/A2tdownload.html


Locating AscToHTM on the Web
----------------------------
Should you wish to convert text other that just tables, we
urge you to investigate AscToHTM which produced the HTML versions
of these files from the text versions (match the spelling mistakes
if you don't believe me).  It's pages are

      	http://www.yrl.co.uk/~jaf/asc2html.html 
      	http://www.yrl.co.uk/~jaf/a2hdownload.html

and its documentation is at

      	http://www.yrl.co.uk/~jaf/doco/A2H.HTM


Installing the software
-----------------------

Simply unzip the zip file.  If you're reading this, you've 
done that already :)


Running the software
--------------------

See the doco for more details.  It will depend on your 
operating system.  Basically AscToTab runs from the command
line as follows

	AscToTab <filespec> [<policy_file>] [/qualifiers]

You'll need to check the documentation for fuller details,
I'm not typing all that in twice :)


It's postcardware Jim, but not as we know it
--------------------------------------------
Initially this software was offered as postcardware, but 
not one person sent me a postcard.  A few people sent nice 
email asking me to change the software or to give them the 
code, but that doesn't count :(

Now this software is nearly-freeware, i.e it's free, except
that I've plastered adverts for AscToHTM all over the 
documetation (you know you *really* should try it, it's very
good).  If you want more *free* software, visit Yezerski
Roper's web site at

      	http://www.yrl.co.uk/~yr/Free/

Finally, if you continue to use the software, at your 
conscience gets to you, be the first on your block 
(in the world?) and send me a postcard (it doesn't have to 
say anything apart from "AscToTab was here", but if you put 
an email address on it I promise to say "thank you").  Postcards 
should be sent to

	John A Fotheringham
	35 Nursery Road
	Heaton Norris
	Stockport
	SK4 2ND
	UK


Contacts
--------
Any problems or feedback should be mailed to jaf@yrl.co.uk.  
I'm reasonably open to bug reports and suggested improvements.

Once again, thanks for looking

John A Fotheringham	01-May-1998
