RE: Static use of CGILua

["John Passaniti" <jpass@...>]

> 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.

Have you considered the Wiki approach?

You start by defining a simplified markup language specific to your
interests, style, and needs.  You then write a translator for that markup
language into HTML.  Since the source isn't bound to HTML, you can then
write translators to whatever other formats you may later want (XHTML,
Postscript, the DocBook DTD, whatever).  Then, you can tweak the translator
when two months down the road you find out that Browser X doesn't like the
HTML <Y> element you've been using, or you decide frames are evil and want
to render them as tables.

Most people get hung up on the Wiki concept because they think it means that
pages must be publicly editable.  But that's just part of the Wiki culture,
not the technology Wiki uses.

Others don't like the specific markup used by Wiki's, but that's not sacred
either.  The point is to first define what you want out of the preprocessor,
and then come up with a language for describing it.  If you went for a
traditional Wiki markup syntax, you could do it in a screen of Lua code.
More complex, more code-- it's up to you.