[Sheflug] Re: Hypercard

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

Executive summary:  I don't know of anything like what you want.

To achieve maintainability, I currently use templates containing most
of the HTML framework, and XEmacs/PSGML which gives a lot of
convenient functionality for logically structuring documents
(splitting elements intelliently, for example).

This method is getting stretched, too much effort for the product.

Since I don't see a good general-purpose tool, I'll go to Apache +
mod_py and generate all pages from scripts.  I'll have a toplevel page
generator which will do things like place navbars and decorations, and
pass it a function object to draw the page itself.  This can be done
recursively.  But I don't know what would be best for you.

>>>>> "Matt" == Matt Fairtlough <fairtlough [at] blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

    Matt> Perhaps I should say what kind of Web authoring tool I would
    Matt> like

:-)

    Matt> 1. one which generates pages readable from Windoze, Solaris
    Matt> and Linux under IE, Netscape and other major browsers, not
    Matt> necessarily Java enabled.  No excluded HTML constructs.
    Matt> Adding HTML code to generated pages should not be a
    Matt> problem.

There's a Perl script called genpage which basically wraps your
content in a format.  But you have to write the content directly.  As
HTML.  Easy, general, and requires lots of management time.

    Matt> 2. a simple scripting language, something like Hypertalk.

Hm.  Would it be possible to use a mod_perl or mod_python (the latter
is my preference) -enabled Apache server?

Then you could build up your own set of tools.  The generated HTML can
be looked at just by running the .pl or .py from the command line.
True, the first few times you'd have to create buttons and things like
that yourself, but you could put them in subroutines.

This would not be very portable to other people, though; you'd have to
teach them personally.

    Matt> 3. a hierarchy of layers.  Actually a tree structure would
    Matt> be more flexible than a simple background layer and a
    Matt> two-level hierarchy (stack and card) but maybe that would be
    Matt> too complex.

This is probably not very easy to accomplish in HTML, as you mentioned
elsewhere.

    Matt> 4. some predefined backgrounds (style sheets/themes/ what
    Matt> have you) and easy ways to create new ones and modify old
    Matt> ones

This is what genpage is best at.  However, you can do just as well
with a .pl or .py script without the genpage machinery.

One could probably adapt glade to do 3 and 4, but AFAIK nobody has
done so yet.

    Matt> 5. navigation structure tools as in FrontPage.  It would be
    Matt> good to have a graphical representation of the navigation
    Matt> structure that can be edited with lightning speed and update
    Matt> all related links and buttons automatically as well as
    Matt> putting labels on buttons depending on the navigation
    Matt> structure.

This probably doesn't exist yet.  It should be straightforward but
tedious to do.  

    Matt> 6. Decent publishing features (publish just what has changed
    Matt> etc) which don't require the user to manually track all the
    Matt> new, old, irrelevant or changed files.  A way to indicate
    Matt> which files are to be published and which not.

Do this separately with CVS.

    Matt> 7. Good site reports and file management tools

? not sure what you mean.  This sounds like server stuff?

    Matt> I'm intrigued by the idea of 2-way links but I don't have
    Matt> any idea what Xanadu is or how it achieves them.  Hypercard
    Matt> has/d only 1-way links I think.

Xanadu is the original hyperdocument context pushed by Ted Nelson
since the mid 60's.

Two-way links would be maintained as some sort of server-side
database.  You'd access it by generating all pages on the fly.  Every
anchor would allow you to "go back" (there would be a button there),
and if there was more than one place you could have come from, there
would be a "related links" menu you could access.  I would try doing
it with an eensy-weensy button, left click to go to "came from", right
click to get the "possible came from" list.

The server would collect references from off-site to augment the
list.  This would have to be subject to a "no-cache" protocol just
like the ordinary caches.

But none of this is implemented anywhere AFAIK.  :-)


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