The HTML Data Refinery is a Microsoft® Visual Basic® application the LitWare developers wrote to make it easier to create well-formed XML documents.
This tool creates well-formed globalized XML template files from hand-coded HTML files. You can strip locale-specific text from the resultant XML files. When the XML files are not associated with a specific locale, they can be merged with a language- or arena-specific file of text strings (the lingo file) to create a localized version of an application. The tool also provides an option to extract localizable text from the HTML file and save these text strings to another file, ready for localization.
The HTML Data Refinery includes a build option that merges a locale-specific lingo file with a globalized XML template file to create a localized XML or HTML file. The tool provides a number of ways to customize the output files. For example, you can add custom attributes and tags and the build process includes these in the resultant XML or HTML file.
The following topics describe the features of the HTML Data Refinery:
Lessons Learned relates the experience of using the HTML Data Refinery to create the globalized template files and the lingo file and to build language-specific HTML for the PT application. The LitWare developers acknowledge that the HTML Data Refinery is not a complete or perfect solution, and describe the modifications they made by hand to the globalized XML template files and lingo file after the files were built.
Note When HTML files contain script and you want to use the HTML Data Refinery to convert HTML to well-formed XML, you may need to change the security settings in your browser. To verify your settings, right-click the Internet Explorer icon on your desktop and click Properties. Click the Security tab in the Internet Properties dialog box and then click Custom Security. Locate the Active Scripting node in the Settings list and select Disable or Prompt. If Enable is selected for this node, the script in the HTML file will run and the result of running the script will replace the source script in the HTML file when you save the file.