Dealing with HTML Tables

[Devin Asay]

Okay, I'm just brainstorming here about how to parse text in HTML 
tables to make it neat and readable in a Rev field or fields. A couple 
of approaches occur to me:

- Download the html file, and basically use tabs and returns to 
separate the text in a coherent way. This is easy but could turn out 
messy.

- Parse out the table cell contents and put it into the cells of a 
table field. Might work, but seems like it wouldn't handle non-tabular 
text well.

- Dynamically create text fields and table fields as needed, based on 
how the html file parses out, use the characteristics of the text 
(textSize, formattedHeight, formattedWidth, etc.) to set the fields to 
be large enough to display the all of the text or table without 
scrolling. Then stack the fields top to bottom and group them in a 
group with a vertical scrollbar and scroll the group instead of the 
field. Might work but might be complicated to program. Maybe 
performance hits here?

Has anyone tried to do something like this? I noticed Xavier in 
DiscreteBrowser uses the first approach. Any ideas? The idea is not to 
exactly duplicate html tables, but to render the text in tables in a 
pleasing and readable way.

Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University