[TriLUG] More difficult than it should be

[Roadrunner]

If the rtf is consistent enough you could convert to plain text or XML or HTML and go from whichever gets his rtf sources closest to fielded data. If the php config allows pipes or shell execs, you could use Linux commands (assuming that is what the host is running). Or preprocess the rtf off site as a validation step. 

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 1, 2012, at 4:29 PM, Brian McCullough <bdmc at buadh-brath.com> wrote:

> Folks,
> 
> As usual, this is one of the places that many of us look when we have
> "interesting" questions.
> 
> 
> I have a "friend" ( well he is most of the time ) who has asked me to do
> a "mail merge" program on his web site.
> 
> Ok, fine.  No big problem, right?
> 
> Except that he wants to use RTF as the source of the mailing list, and
> Word Docs as the letter template.
> 
> I know that I can use PHP on this machine, but have very little access.
> It is a hosted web site, with only FTP access to the "back side."
> 
> 
> Hunting for PHP code that will do this for me has been, well, not
> completely fruitless, but almost so, since most of the code seems to be
> wanting to generate RTF files from some other technology, or translate
> RTF files into PDFs or something else.
> 
> 
> I would much rather do this the "right" way, with a database engine
> providing both the mailing list and templates, since the output is, I
> would think, going to be either plain text or HTML.  However, these are
> what he has provided, so I am trying to comply.  At least until I can
> tell him definitively that he is crazy to try and use M$ documents for
> somthing that is MUCH better done otherwise.
> 
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Brian
> 
> 
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