relative path variable similiar to -D VAR~.

[<nospam@thanx> (James A. Treacy)]

What I'm looking for is having a variable that does the opposite
of '-D ROOT~.'. This gives the relative path to the directory you started
in. I'd like the path of my current directory relative to where I
started. Is this actually available already or have I missed a simple
means of computing it?

In case I've made this sound more complicate then it is, here is an
example.
   top wml directory: webwml
   current directory: webwml/a/b
I'd like an easy way to retrieve 'a/b'.


As an aside, some people voiced some interest in my use of the wml for
the Debian web pages. There are two things we do that complicate matters
somewhat. First, the pages are mirrored (using rsync mostly) to a
number of places around the world. This necessatated that the html files
be placed in a different directory from the source so the .wml files
aren't mirrored unnecessarily. This took a bit of work with Makefiles
to get to work correctly.

Second, there are translations of the web pages in progress. This is
where the use of wml really comes in handy. To begin a translation one simply
extracts a copy of the english pages from CVS, copies the directory structure
to a new directory and makes a few modifications to the template files. Then they
can start translating pages as they wish. All the details of headers, footers
and the multiple scripts used are hidden from the translators.

Since the pages are served using content negotiation, it is not necessary that
every page be translated (although that should be a goal). Translations are in
separate files, instead of using the nice features of pass 9 in wml, because we
are distributed all over the world and it was felt that this would allow
translators greater freedom to make small modifications for issues particular to
using Debian in their language.

As you can see this is an organizational nightmare and would never work
except for the fact that Debian has many wonderful volunteers.
It's also amazing that this is all done using free tools (apache, wml, perl)
that are better than any commercial equivalents out there.

Jay Treacy
______________________________________________________________________
Website META Language (WML)                www.engelschall.com/sw/wml/
Official Support Mailing List                   sw-wml@engelschall.com
Automated List Manager                       majordomo@engelschall.com