michael said:
>   Let's have the code

sure thing, boss.

>   and install it where everyone can find/use it.

great idea...

>   Help Newby set it up later.

i don't think he will need any help, but yeah, sure.

and, of course, i invite people to improve the script.

-bowerbird

===========================================

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

########### read the user input
read(STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});

# Split the name-value pairs
@pairs = split(/&/, $buffer);
foreach $pair (@pairs) {
   ($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair);
   # Un-Webify plus signs and %-encoding
   $value =~ tr/+/ /;
   $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
   $value =~ s///g;
   if ($allow_html != 0) {
      $value =~ s/<([^>]|\n)*>//g;
   }
   $FORM{$name} = $value;
      $value =~ s/\cM//g;
      if ($name eq "theinput") {$thebook=$value};
}

if ($thebook eq "") {
$thebook='paste the text you want to unwrap in this field, and click "unwrap"...'
};

print "content-type: text/html\n\n";
print '<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">';
print "\n"; print "\n";
print '<head><title>unwrap p.g. paragraphs';
print '</title>'; print "\n";
print '<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">';
print '<body><pre>';

print '<form method="post"';

#########################################################
### note that this line has to be changed to point to the appropriate place ###
print 'action="http://z-m-l.com/go/unwrap.pl">';
#########################################################

print '<input align="left" type="submit" value="-- unwrap --"> '; print "\n";
print '<input type="hidden" name="unwrap" value="reporting...">'; print "\n";
print '<p align="left">';
print '<textarea name="theinput" rows=30 cols=80>';
print $thebook;
print '</textarea>';
print '</p>';
print '<input type="hidden" name="hiddenname" value="hiddenvalue">';

### the numbers here refer to a list of steps
### i posted in a message to gutvol-d ###

#1
#skip
#2
$thebook =~ s/\r\n/\n/g ;
#3
$thebook =~ s/\r/\n/g ;
#4
#skip
#5
#skip
#6
$thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ;
$thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ;
$thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ;
$thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ;
$thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ;
$thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ;
$thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ;
$thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ;
#7
$thebook =~ s/\n/ \n/g ;
#8
$thebook =~ s/ \n \n/\n\n/g ;
#9
$thebook =~ s/\n \n/\n\n/g ;
$thebook =~ s/\n \n/\n\n/g ;
$thebook =~ s/\n \n/\n\n/g ;
$thebook =~ s/\n \n/\n\n/g ;
#10
# wait! not yet!
#11
$thebook =~ s/ \n /\n /g ;
# maybe clone this for an asterisk in column 1, and
# clone this for a number in column 1 which is
# followed by a period-space in columns 2-3.
$thebook =~ s/ \n>/\n>/g ;
$thebook =~ s/ \n</\n</g ;
$thebook =~ s/ \n\t/\n\t/g ;
$thebook =~ s| \n/tab|\n/tab|g ;
#12
$thebook =~ s/ \n/ /g ;

print $thebook;

print "</form></pre></body></html>";