Throughout the two weeks between PCLug meetings I keep a file I call links.txt in the directory where I intend to build the slides for the next meeting. For the actual links slide I like to format the links in an unsorted list..

<ul>
	<li><a href="http://link1">name1</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://link2">name2</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://link3">name3</a></li>
</ul>

Well, taking this text file formatted as line1=name, line2=link, line3=name, line4=link... etc. and putting into the format above is a bit tedious (and it screams for a script). Here is a link to the script that I came up with. We'll cover it now.

The easiest way to use this script (for me) is to put it in a directory on your path (~/bin) and then within Vim execute the command ":r!make_link_list /pathto/links.txt". This executes the script which puts the formatted text to stdout, then takes the stdout and puts it right into the current document.