RE: Static use of CGILua

[Philippe Lhoste <PhiLho@...>]

> Some background:
> 
> I'm in the process of designing a SourceForge website for my VM system,
> Mite, and I'm intending to use the SF systems as much as possible, leaving
> quite a simple few pages of my own. Nevertheless, quite a bit of 
> the content
> of my main page especially (project summary, recent news &c.) will be
> generated from external content, to avoid having to re-edit a static page
> frequently (I already run another web site, www.haskell.org/ghc/, for the
> Glasgow Haskell Compiler, which is purely static, and maintaining it is a
> pain; www.freepoc.org, which I've updated several times (e.g. 
> with releases
> of EPOC Lua!) is so painful, owing to the large amount of JavaScript &c.,
> that I dread new program releases for this reason).
> 
> The relevant bit:
> 
> I thought all along that I should use an HTML preprocessing tool 
> (given that
> I couldn't find a Linux web development system that supported some form of
> meta-HTML) to allow me to generate static pages intelligently 
> (given that I
> want to use the same techniques to maintain my private web pages, which,
> unlike SF, are hosted in a place that doesn't have CGI support). 
> But in the
> end it seemed that my page content was too simple for the tools I 
> looked at.
> 
> Nevertheless, I want to keep a programmatic approach, so I 
> started wondering
> about using Lua. Then I remembered CGILua.
> 
> So my question is: can CGILua easily be used for static web site creation?
> (I don't see why not.) Also, is the Lua 4.0/1 version any closer to
> completion (I understand it was mainly a question of translating the
> documentation into English; I'm only sorry I can't help with that effort).
> 
> I'm also interested in comments from other people engaged in similar
> efforts. Also, I've found one system that seems to do the job I want: chpp
> (http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/~schani/chpp/), which is intended as a
> preprocessor, and includes a built-in language that has hashes 
> and lists. It
> can't be used for CGI, though, and it'd be nicer to use a system 
> that can be
> used either statically or dynamically.

Hey, I asked for CGILua for Lua 4.0 just for this reason.
I downloaded the current working version, but doesn't have found yet the
time to take a close look to see if it fit my needs.
I like the philosophy of CGILua for template files (ie. make files that
doesn't look bad in a browser), and it would allow me to use my favorite
scripting language...
If I find time to make it work, I would let you know. I hope the same on
your side :-)

chpp seems interesting. Unlike most other HTML preprocessors, it is written
in C (the other are mostly written in Perl). But I don't feel like learning a
new language (time is short) and I don't have much use for programmatic here
(although that's not bad to have it).

Of the dozen of HTML preprocessors on the Net, I discard those trying to use
the HTML syntax (pseudo tags).
There is also Jamal, listed as link on the chpp pages, but with incorrect
URL :( The correct URL is: http://peter.verhas.com/progs/perl/jamal/

Also of interest are WPP (http://the.sunnyspot.org/wpp/index.html), GTML
(http://www.lifl.fr/~beaufils/gtml/) or HTMLPP
(http://www.imatix.com/html/htmlpp/index.htm).
Note that these doesn't support necessarily programmatic code, except by
evaluating Perl expressions.
WPP is near of my needs, if I can hack (using my poor Perl skills) some
features from GTML (like calculating image size) into it.
Or I hack CGILua to fit my needs...

Any though on the subject is welcome.

Regards.

-- 
--._.·´¯`·._.·´¯`·._.·´¯`·._.·´¯`·._.·´¯`·._.·´¯`·._.--
Philippe Lhoste (Paris -- France)
Professional programmer and amateur artist
http://jove.prohosting.com/~philho/
--´¯`·._.·´¯`·._.·´¯`·._.·´¯`·._.·´¯`·._.·´¯`·._.·´¯`--

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