Re: st: RE: Creating HTML from SMCL log file including graphics - revised log2html.ado

["David Elliott" <dcelliott@gmail.com>]

1) The only way to guarantee reliable rendering in all browsers is to
use the Portable Network Graphics file format.  While IE will display
Windows Metafiles, Gecko browsers will not.  It is possible to add the
capability of picking up other filetypes by deducing the extension
from what follows the 'written in' portion of the export confirmation,
since as I have commented in (2) below, the extension is not included
in the confirmation message when the -graph export filename, as(png)-
form of the command is used.

2) You said: "True, but the file produced does not have an extension,
so adding one in the <img> tag will not help."

Actually, the .png extension is added to the file regardless of what
the confirmation message said - try it yourself, you'll see.
Personally, I think this is a deficiency in the graph export command i
it should state the filename and extension.

3) Creating reliable relative addressing is beyond me.  Handling
reference to an ./image/ subdirectory would not be too difficult but
the real problem arises because the graphic is saved to the pwd by
default which one doesn't necessarily know from the log itself and the
log could be saved to a different directory.  I believe it must be the
user's responsibility to have the log and html file and images in the
same directory.  I don't think one can be sufficiently adaptable
programmatically to handle all the relative path possibilities.  If
someone wants to try, hats off to them!

4) Thanks for the explanation on index(...) - I haven't used the
string functions extensively before and was unaware of strpos(...)'s
previous name.  Your code is more elegant would allow capture of a
filename with a space.  I would then have to work back to the slash to
extract the filename.

5) A gropts() argument is certainly possible, for example, to create a
style="display:block;margin:5px; border:2px outset #333; padding:5px"
display style for the images.  (alternatively, that could be added to
the CSS in the head)

Once again, thank you for you help and interest.

DCE


On 5/19/06, David Harrison <david.harrison@icnarc.org> wrote:
> David Elliott wrote:
>
> 1) The restriction to only png is that, if this is going to be rendered
> as HTML, this is the only bitmap file format that can be displayed on
> all the browsers I tested.
>
> A fair point. Some people may prefer another format, provided it renders
> on their own browser.
>
> 2) If you examine the output from the following 4 -graph export-
> commands you will see that the extension is not included when you use
> the [,as(png)] argument: <snip>
>
> True, but the file produced does not have an extension, so adding one in
> the <img> tag will not help.
>
> 3) Ideally, one would have paths relative to the directory in which the
> html log was written.  Unfortunately STATA's string handling functions
> don't include drive|path|filename|extension aware functions like
> JUSTDRIVE( ) | JUSTEXT( ) | JUSTFNAME( ) | JUSTSTEM( ) that would allow
> parsing the various file locations and their relationships relative to
> each other.  For ease of coding and possibility of moving the htmllog
> and images to a different directory in the future, I believe they should
> be in the same directory.  If you hard code the directories, moving the
> files will break the links.  For Internet Explorer, a reference to
> src="c:\web\test.png" will work, but in Gecko-based browsers like
> Netscape|Firefox, it will fail.
>
> Fair point- I was thinking that assuming the html log is going in my
> working directory I may want to code, e.g. -graph export
> images\fig1.png- and have the relative location picked up.
>
> 4) I am aware on the inability to include multiple word filenames.  As a
> general rule, it is inadvisable to have space-separated filenames in web
> addresses.  I could pick up the entire filename, or parse back to the
> preceding '\' or '/' but it is harder than it looks.  I am unable to
> find the index(...) function to which you refer although there is an
> indexnot(...) function referenced under -help string_functions-
>
> I agree that the filename itself is best not to have spaces, but there
> is no reason why the path (which is being stripped off anyway) should
> not. Either way, it would be better to make the code exit with an error
> or do nothing at all if a space-separated name is encountered, rather
> than substituting a link to a non-existent file. The command -index()-
> was renamed -strpos()- in version 9, I used -index()- as the program has
> the version set to 8.
>
> 5) Any suggestions as to what verbatim options you would want,
> remembering that it would be applied to all images?  The <img> tag
> doesn't have a lot of attributes.  While good coding practice would have
> the height and width explicitly specified, this only really helps when
> rendering complex designs since the layout engine is able to know the
> dimensions of images before they have fully downloaded.  You have the
> dimensions only if explicitly specified with the height(600)
> width(800) arguments.
>
> The options do not need to be specified. If you add, say, -gropts(str)-
> in the syntax and then -`gropts'- inside the <img> tag, I can pass any
> options I like to all the graphs when I create the html file.
>
> David
>
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--
David Elliott

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