HTMLNum is a tool for numbering the headings in an HTML document.
1 Intro
1.1 Part 1
1.1.1 First heading
See an example of it in action
HtmlNum was written so that you can use HTML docments in a business environment, for producing your glossy reports in an HTML editor or text editor, rather than suffering the slow performance of a word-processor with large documents.
The program is written in Perl, and you will need to have perl installed to run this program. It should work on any operating system, although it was tested in GNU/Linux. If you find any problems, let me know. If you have improvements for it, let me know.
Download now, 8kB, tar.gz
Is it free? Yes, free as in GNU
Can I customise it? The source-code is designed to be easy to customise, and no matter how odd your numbering system, it can probably cope. See the source- code for details
Does it work on Windows? Yes, I expect so. Go to activestate.com, and download a copy of ActivePerl. That will give you all the tools you need to run this, and other Perl programs.
How does it compare to LaTeX? Well, it should do a similar job in a different way. HTML makes it easy to add images, lots of people know how to edit HTML, and this program allows you to do heading-numbering with it. It won't do typesetting like LaTeX though, nor will it be as good for equation-intensive documents
How does it compare to HTML numbering using CSS? You can number HTML headings using CSS2, but this only works in the Opera browser
How does it compare to $FAVOURITE_WORD_PROCESSOR ? If you have a document large enough that header-numbering is needed, it's probably a lot less painful to split it up into HTML documents, and edit them using a text-editor or HTML editor. It also allows collaborative editing, lets you publish it easily on your intranet, and if all else fails, your word processor will flawlessly import the HTML documents anyway
What can't it do? The main one is page numbering. HTML doesn't have any concept of pages (certainly not while it's being generated), so it's not possible to cross-reference page numbers with this system
How do I adjust the appearance of my document? Look-up CSS, or Cascading Stylesheets, which allow you adjust the appearance of HTML documents in great detail
How do I print my document? You can use a web-browser, making sure you've turned off the headers and footers when printing. See mozilla.org if you need a better web-browser. You can use html2pdf to convert it to a PDF document. You can use your word processor to print it, or convert it to a PDF document. See openoffice.org if you need a better word-processor. You can use html2latex to convert it to a LaTeX document, which easily becomes a PDF for printing. Or you can set up an intranet server to automate the process, accepting HTML documents to convert, print or store.
How do I get Perl? See the Perl section
What modules does it require? HTML::Parser which should be installed already on most Perl installations. Type ppm in windows, or perl -MCPAN -e shell in GNU, then type install HTML::Parser if you don't have it.
HTML::Parser is good isn't it? It's great.
