Exporting from Word

**NeoDante** · February 18th, 2005, 16:45

Is it possible to write out a module in a program like word (so that it can be spell checked for example) and cut & paste into FG? If not; is this a feature we may see at some point (I hope)?
NeoDante

**Visigodo** · February 18th, 2005, 17:32

You can copy from word and then past to FG open window, i dont know if is this what you where thinking.

You can click on the windows logo key to bring up the taskbar and then change from word window and FG window. Thats what i do, dont know if theres others ways.

**tarrasque** · February 18th, 2005, 18:45

i think someone in another thread was asking for an easy way..It would be nice if there was a word (or text) to xml utility that you could run easily from the desktop, perhaps as a seperate entity to FG.

i was thinking along the lines that you could put some kind on control string in word inbetween different rooms and chat text etc , then the converter would automatically split it and do all the xml goodies

**tarrasque** · February 19th, 2005, 15:03

well i've been playing around with excel and word

I already had a word file that had the room titles in BOLD and box (chat) text in RED, room descriptions etc are left as std text

I built a excel macro to convert word to xml

(see notes below)

run FG and create a new campaign, then exit FG

1.right click this link and save as

2. open the sheet and click yes to the macro warning
3. just cut and paste the word text into the excel sheet
4. save a copy of the excel sheet somewhere useful, the xml output will be in the same directory
5. run the macro (alt+F8 ) select 'build'

6. a file will be generated called module export.xml

copy this file into your campaign directory and rename as db.xml (delete or rename the old db.xml file first)

run FG..select your campaign and the import should be there in your storyboard..just add the bells and whistles now

Notes

single quotes " in your text or other illegal characters can cause the import into FG to fail, edit the word file to remove them. (this is especially true of OCR imports)

room titles should be BOLD

boxed (chat) text should be RED

all other text will be treated as standard entries

make the last line of your word file END

all testing done using win XP & excel 2000

any queries, ideas etc email me

[email protected]

Chris

**NeoDante** · February 19th, 2005, 20:39

This looks really good-I just need a copy of excel now ;-)
I'll let you know how it goes once I get it.
Thanks again!

**richvalle** · February 21st, 2005, 04:35

Very, very nice.

A note to others that try to use it.. one of the 'illegal' characters seems to be a -

It was not a problem in every place it was used but some places it generated errors when I tried to load the file up in FG. If you look at the error that FG generates it gives you the line number it does not like. You can open the db.xml file in Notepade and fine the line it is complaining about and figure out what to remove.

The program makes a seperate entry for each room. You can then go in and make links to hook them all together.

rv

**Ged** · February 21st, 2005, 08:25

I have not tried it out myself yet, but could the occasional problem with character '-' be that either dash or hyphen is treated correctly and the other is not (ie whether the line is long or short)? Although the hyphen-dash variance is actually much broader ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash ).

**Bagpuss2** · February 21st, 2005, 10:00

Yeah I found the following characters cause problems when converted from Word.

The ' in words like can't, won't, etc. When typed in Word, Word converts that to a different character, a curved ' that might look identical to the one you typed depending on the font you use, but isn't. The XML cuts off the text at the odd character a block of text with the word can't in it will appear to end with the word "can" and nothing after that.

Also Word changed the character -, depending on what it is between, it has three different lengths only one of which works. The other cause the same problem as the ' character.

What you need to do is open the XML file in your XML reader (or Notepad) find the offensive character, select it and copy it. Then open Replace..., paste it into the Find box, then type the standard character in the Replace box, and Replace all. Admittedly with the ' it will look like Find ' and Replace with ', but they are different characters.

You need to do this for ', and two versions of - in most documents.

**tarrasque** · February 21st, 2005, 12:33

a little update

no need for excel now, works straight from word

Word converter

just load the document

replace the text with your own & run the macro (build) using alt+f8

i have removed the check for single quotes, as discussed there are quite a few illegal characters, when i've got time i will address that as well

Chris

**richvalle** · February 21st, 2005, 17:23

tarrasque, thanks a lot for working on this!

2 things. When I run your new word doc converter it is not making an xml file...? I do get ~$_converter.doc file but it is only 1kb in size.

Would it be possbile to add the NPC guys here as well so they go into their own section. Then the monsters could be added in the word doc in the same place as the rooms they are in and in FG they will show up under Personalities.

rv

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