Creating HTML output from Informix 4GL Reports

Hi All: I am working with Informix 4GL application which have lots of automated reports going out to customers. Presently, the report formats are plain character-based. My objective is to create reports in HTML formats using Informix 4GL report functionality. I have done that for one report by printing all HTML tags, colors etc in the 4GL report in different lines and creating a report with "html" extension. This html file can then be opened in any web browser for viewing. But this involves lot of coding from the developer's perspective. So I am looking forward for any kind of generic methodology/automated tool available which can be used along with my existing Informix 4GL on Solaris OS and that will help me to convert the existing Informix 4GL reports to create HTML outputs with minimum code changes. Thanks, Arindam Mukherjee

We had some similar output that we needed to make available on internal web sites. We saved the 4gl output as files and then wrote a Perl script to present the reports to the web. The script simply changes all control-L page breaks to "HTML page breaks" and wraps each page in <PRE> tags. It isn't elegant but it is very effective and required very little work to write and it was free. I'd suspect you could also write a generic Perl formatting program to re-format certain/most of your reports for HTML presentation quickly, without changing the 4gl reports themselves. It wouldn't be as visually pleasing as 're-writes' but it would be much faster. On the other hand, there are certainly for-pay solutions to what you are trying to do. HTH, -D -----Original Message----- From: ids-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:ids-bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of Mukherjee, Arindam Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 10:27 AM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: Creating HTML output from Informix 4GL Reports [9167] Hi All: I am working with Informix 4GL application which have lots of automated reports going out to customers. Presently, the report formats are plain character-based. My objective is to create reports in HTML formats using Informix 4GL report functionality. I have done that for one report by printing all HTML tags, colors etc in the 4GL report in different lines and creating a report with "html" extension. This html file can then be opened in any web browser for viewing. But this involves lot of coding from the developer's perspective. So I am looking forward for any kind of generic methodology/automated tool available which can be used along with my existing Informix 4GL on Solaris OS and that will help me to convert the existing Informix 4GL reports to create HTML outputs with minimum code changes. Thanks, Arindam Mukherjee ************************************************************************ ******* Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. <font face="Arial" size="2" color="#008000"> Please consider the environment before printing this email.</font> ________________________________________________________________________________ _____ The information contained in this email may be confidential and/or legally privileged. It has been sent for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If the reader of this message is not an intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication, or any of its contents, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message. To contact our email administrator directly, send to postmaster@dlapiper.com Thank you. ________________________________________________________________________________ _____