Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Program to beautify crappy exports from other applications?

<< < (2/4) > >>

bob99:
You could copy to the clipboard, run PureText on it (which would strip out all the junk) and then paste in back into something like Word.

Once there, it should be relatively easy to create macros or a script to prettify it. I do this with a few things I'm responsible for where it's not worth the effort to pursue a more complex solution.

Not ideal, but it will give you something to use in the interim. Plus, copying to the clipboard gets around the hassles of trying to reverse engineer proprietary file formats so you can get at the underlying data.
-40hz (February 23, 2011, 10:04 AM)
--- End quote ---

I have done similar using Notepad++.  Pasted to it, run a pre-defined macro to clean it up and add delimiters if necessary then copy/paste into a pre-defined Word or Excel document/template.  It took a little front-end work setting up the macros and template but from then on it works smoothly.  And the more times I do it the easier and faster it goes.

AndyM:
If you want to print what's in a window on the screen, even if it needs to be scrolled, you could use SnagIt.  I think Mouser's Screenshot Captor might do the same thing.  This is far more selective than Prt-Screen but the printing options are still limited.  In SnagIt you can expand the shot and then either print it or print to a pdf.  It has the advantage of being simple and quick, no reformatting even if you want to.

If printing a scrollable window is more limited than what you are looking for, then never mind ;)

superboyac:
Personally I'd rather take #2 to a meeting than #1 - the formatting is less than optimal, but it doesn't have the "color puke explosion" nastiness of #1 :)

Anyway, sure, if you can export to a sane, well-structured format (XML, CSV, whatever) it's definitely possible to write an auto-formatter. For XML, it might be as simple as defining a stylesheet.
-f0dder (February 23, 2011, 10:16 AM)
--- End quote ---
Sorry buddy.  I don't know if you are speaking hypothetically or what, but if I took that to a meeting and showed it to people, I would be "talked to" afterward.  The colors are not for aesthetics.  I've colored things like that so they draw the eye to the appropriate places.  And I wouldn't show that in a meeting either.  I'd use softer earth tones that are more beautiful to look at.

I was thinking that what I really want is like a Crystal Reports type of application.  Or SQL Server Reporting Services.  Or something like that.

kfitting:
the easiest thing would be for the app to dump its data to an HTML table and let a browser handle the printing.
--- End quote ---

I disagree... I am amazed at how poor IE and Opera printing is.  I know, why would anyone want to print a webpage?  But a lot of PDF converters are just printers... many times I'm not making a hard copy, just saving to PDF and it looks like crap.  Opera's functionality feels like it's going backwards and IE's just never really matured in configurability.

I wish what you said was true, it certainly would make things nice, but I dont see it yet.

cmpm:
MyLife Organized says you can Sync to Outlook in the features.
Try printing from there and see how it looks.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page