[ANNOUNCE] WML 2.0

[Denis Barbier <nospam@thanx>]

All right, here is the announcement i did not have time to post yesterday.

I usually show changes between 1.x.y and 1.x.(y+1) as documented in the
ChangeLog file, but this time you have an excerpt of the NEWS file which
exhibits major changes between WML 1.7 and WML 2.0.
Of course, lots of bugfixes and other improvements have been
incorporated.

      - Several improvements in wml_p1_ipp:
          The -S and -I flags are now processed in right-to-left order
          so that these flags in .wmlrc files have precedence over
          .wmlrc files in upper directories.

          Variable substitutions can now be nested and new constructs
          have been added. The only restriction is that parenthesis
          inside variable expansion are forbidden in inner expressions.

          New automatic variables are provided to ease generation of
          diaporamas (automatic references to previous and next files).

          Block comments are no more supported by wml_p1_ipp.

      - Meta-HTML is replaced by mp4h for Pass 2: the new parser has a
        syntax very similar to the one of Meta-HTML, and tags have been
        defined to ensure maximum compatibility.  Please read
        README.mp4h and the wml_p2_mp4h documentation for details on how
        to migrate from Meta-HTML to mp4h.

      - Allow nesting of wml_p3_eperl commands: this is one of the
        biggest challenge of WML 2.0 whereas it is entirely transparent
        for end users.  Read the wml_macros(7) manpage for details on
        how to write nestable macros.

      - Promote alternate syntax in wml_p5_divert: until wml-1.7.0,
        pass 5 used expressions containing angle characters.  In many
        situations this could confuse pass 2, and so an alternate form
        without angle characters is preferred.  Old syntax is still
        valid but should be avoided.

      - New include files:
          wml::std::label implements labels and references
          wml::mod::version ensures that a recent enough WML is run
          wml::mod::MakeMaker is to help writing portable WML modules

      - Wwwtable is replaced by freetable, a GPL replacement.  Syntax
        is very similar and input files should work without changes.

      - Support for both GIF and PNG formats.
        Logos are shipped in both formats, and generated images may be
        written in GIF (without the patented LZW algorithm) or PNG (if
        PNG library and headers are found) formats.
        Modified versions of libgd and GD are used to support both
        formats.

      - Change format of ISO dates
        Format was previously dd-mm-yyyy and it has been changed to
        yyyy-mm-dd to conform to ISO standards.

      - A global base name may be used for generated images: instead of
        defining IMGB_BASE, IMGDOT_BASE,... it is now possible to define
        IMAGE_BASE and all generated images will refer to this variable.

      - Better processing on files in other directories: the main goal
        is to allow use of the VPATH feature of GNU make to build
        webpages into a test area before compiling webpages.  This
        does only apply to the wml binary, since there is no reason
        to mix WMk and Makefiles.

Detailed description of individual changes is available at
    http://www.engelschall.com/sw/wml/distrib/latest/ChangeLog

I would like to sincerely thank all contributors to this mailing-list
and to WML in general.  Your suggestions are essential to make WML even
better.

Hope you will enjoy this new release ;-)

Kind regards

-- 
Denis Barbier
WML Maintainer

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