15 September 2002: see the below wu.

I made this for work. It's an [HTML]/[JavaScript] 'thing' designed to take all the nasty stuff out of [MS-HTML|Microsoft HTML], as generated by [Microsoft Word], among other things.

It's tested to work on [Internet Explorer] 5.5. The assumption is that if you have [Word], you will have the aforementioned browser.

All you have to do is create a file with the below contents, save it as an [HTML] file, open it, and follow the simple instructions on the screen. It will delete <DIV> and <SPAN> tags, and leave in (I'm afraid) the [XML]-style mess created by [index]es, [table of contents], and other stuff. It should be fairly easy to customize (or correct :-) if you know what you're doing. I have absolutely no idea what will happen to diagrams created in word using the [Microsoft Draw]-alike.

Because I haven't figured out how to make regexps span abitrary numbers of line-breaks, you'll still have some ''style'' attributes in the HTML unless you check ''Remove line-breaks''. But if you do check it, you won't be able to edit the results without further regexp-fu. Sigh...

If there are any stupid bugs, please tell me. If you have any constructive criticism (i.e. other than '[your code SUCKS, fool!]' ([I know])), please tell me.

Enjoy. the headache


<html><head><title>DeMSHTML</title><script>



var mshtml="";



function doParse() {



    var regexpTagsToDelete = new Array( "div", "span", "!", "o:", "/o:" );

    var normalTagsToDelete = new Array( "</div>", "</span>" );

    var tagsToDeMunge = new Array ( "p","b","i", "br")



    //this is the bit that causes

    //your browser to grind to a halt.

    mshtml = document.forms['jsRep']['html'].value



    if( document.forms['jsRep']['checkLine'].checked == true ) {

        var re= /\n|\r/gi



        mshtml = mshtml.replace( re, " " )

    }



    execTagRegExp( tagsToDeMunge, false )



    execTagRegExp( regexpTagsToDelete, true )



    for( var i = 0; i != normalTagsToDelete.length; i++ ) {

        deleteStr( normalTagsToDelete[i] )

    }



    document.forms['jsRep']['html'].value = mshtml



}



function execTagRegExp( tagsToFind, deleteTag ) {

    for( var i = 0; i != tagsToFind.length; i++ ) {

        var re = new RegExp( "<" + tagsToFind[i] + "[^>]*>", "gi" );

        if( deleteTag ) {

            mshtml = mshtml.replace( re, "" );

        } else {

            mshtml = mshtml.replace( re, "<" + tagsToFind[i] + ">" );

        }

    }

}



function deleteStr( strToDel ) {

    var lastIndex = 0;

    var nextIndex = 0;

    var strToReturn="";

    var lenStrToDel = strToDel.length;



    while( (nextIndex = mshtml.indexOf( strToDel, lastIndex ) ) != -1 ) {



        strToReturn += mshtml.substring( lastIndex, nextIndex )



        lastIndex = nextIndex + lenStrToDel;



    }



    strToReturn += mshtml.substring( lastIndex, mshtml.length );



    mshtml = strToReturn;



}





</script></head><body>



<p>Enter your text here...</p>



<form name='jsRep'>



<textarea name="html" rows="20" style="width:100%"/></textarea>



<p>...and then click this button:</p>



<p><input name='goButton' value="demunge" type="button" onclick="doParse()"/></p>



<p><input name='checkLine' value="remove line-breaks" type="checkbox" /> Remove line-breaks</p>



</form></body></html>

For bigger documents, it is best to use [Mozilla]. Tested with 0.9.3. and 1.1 IE5.x just crashes with that much input, whereas Mozilla just slows down horribly. For bigger documents, use [sed] or something.

Also, this doesn't convert all the special characters like [smart quotes] and stuff.

Microsoft HTML de-bastardization