Sorry for getting back, bit I've have some real work to do.
In response to the message from Jon75: no I never did get it to work - I didn't even get XAMPP to download and run. The situation is for my Calderdale Companion website where I have a set of programs which I wrote to collate the entries and prepare the text for uploading, and I just wanted to reduce my dependence on them and let HTML (or whatever) do a bit more of the work, but it's obviously more difficult and more obscure to do this.
Obviously a case of ... if it ain't broke, fix it until it is.
Thanks to all
Malcolm Bull