About the CGI kit

At the moment this is just random notes.

Code organization

• The PERL modules need to be in a subdirectory, typically a symlink. They would, of course, be addressed as Foo::Whatever.
• Avoid global variables to allow conversion to mod_perl
• Templates and site parameters belong in the cgi-bin directory, so that the code can access them.
• Most file formatting is done at upload time, by whatever CGI does the upload. If mod_dav is used (probably a good idea), there needs to be a CGI to run the processing. One way would be start/end session ops. A cron job can handle the inevitable loose ends.

File handling

.ht files

automatic crosslinking, entity expansion, header/footer tag expansion -- there will be a limited number of extra tags (tbd). Dynamic form processing will be done using a CGI, e.g. /process.cgi/path/to/xxx.ht]

.wt files (wiki text)

WikiWiki formatting codes as well as the same crosslinking and entity expansion as text in .ht files. Mail-style headers for additional control info. Not converted to <wiki> tags in .ht files, because we want to allow owners to edit them in the original format.

.html files

converted to .ht on upload by splicing in header/footer tags, unless otherwise specified.

Docbook, .tex, .flk, .abc, etc.

statically converted to HTML and/or pdf as necessary and appropriate, with the originals kept around for editing.

All conversion to HTML should be done offline when a file is uploaded; the best thing is probably to automagically generate a Makefile with the appropriate dependencies. Skinning could be done by specifying a handler for HTML.

Note that ad selection (member, nonmember, etc.) doesn't require active HTML, only a CGI for the image src that does the appropriate redirects.

Tags and Entities

Tags

For the moment we need only a limited number of tags.

<header >

<footer >

<toc />

Table of contents for the page

<index />

Index for the directory. Maybe an attribute to specify a subdirectory, and maybe some formatting options.

<date >

Including format in Unix date(1) format.

< >

<wiki>

Delimits `WikiWiki' text.

< >

Entities

There will also be site-wide and directory-wide entity definitions. Anything not defined (e.g. the standard HTML entities like &amp;) will be passed through.

&;

&;