Re: understanding swpage.wml

[Denis Barbier <nospam@thanx>]

On Mon, 21 Feb 2000, Jeff McCarrell wrote:

> Hi.  I am trying to understand how best to use wml, and I have been
> examining swpage.wml.  I have a couple of questions:

Hi Jeff,

> What is the top level command that builds all of the pages?  I assume that
> it is some wmk command, perhaps from a Makefile of some sort?

Just ``wmk -a''

> In this fragment:
> 
>      74	      <ifeq "$(areaparent)" ""
>      75	          <if <match "<get-var WML_SRC_FILENAME>" "index\\..*">
>      76	              <set-var areaparent="../">
>      77	              <set-var areaparent="">
>      78	          >
>      79	          <set-var areaparent="$(areaparent)">
>      80	      >
> 
> what is the motive for doing this?  I mean, I understand what the code is
> doing, but why do you want the parent directory when the source filename
> starts with index. ?

Hmmm, areaparent is never defined in input files, so these lines should
be removed.

> This code:
> 
>     130	..!PAGE_TITLE!>>
>     131	Unknown Page
>     132	<<..
> 
> sets up a default for the PAGE_TITLE named diversion.  Why is this a good
> thing to do?  It seems to me that there are a number of other (simpler) 
> ways of defining default values for things.  Why is the method of
> using a default diversion used here?

The page title is used at the beginning of the page (e.g. in META tags).
If you do not use diversions, your wml file looks like
   <set-var title="Title of this page">
   #include 'templates'
or
   #include 'templates' title="Title of this page"

With diversions, you can define the title everywhere, for instance
   #include 'templates'
   <page-title "Title of this page">

> As an observation, the thing about wml that is giving me the most difficulty
> is trying to understand how to put the whole thing together in a sensible way.
> Publishing swpage.wml has been very helpful for me, to see the whole thing
> working together.
> 
> A tarball of the site that I could modify and run the passes of
> individually to examine the intermediate output would help too.  Is
> that available somewhere?

No, but this is a good idea. I'll try to find time to provide this
tarball.

> The other meta level question I have is how actively is wml being
> used?  I know that is a subjective question, but if you have an
> opinion, I'd like to hear it.

Have a look at http://www.engelschall.com/sw/wml/example/refs.phtml

-- 
Denis Barbier
WML Maintainer

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