NAME
WML FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions on WML
DESCRIPTION
This is the Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) list with answers on WML.
It is divided into question/answer parts, each answering one particular
topic.
General questions:
G01: What is WML?
G02: WML is distributed as free software, does this mean I also can use
it free of charge?
G03: Why is WML a toolkit of disjunct programs instead of one big
integrated program?
G04: Which tools are included in the WML distribution?
G05: WML is as powerful as it can, but are there even any restrictions?
G06: Where do I find documentation?
G07: Is there any official support for WML?
G08: How I can I send a bug report to the author?
G09: I really want to use WML for textprocessing because it’s such
powerful, isn’t it?
Questions about passes:
P01: How can I avoid conflicts with a particular WML pass?
P02: How can I avoid conflicts with a particular WML pass for only some
areas of the input file?
P03: Is there a way to change pass order?
P04: Why shall I not change original pass order?
Questions about include files:
I01: How can I install or activate my own include files?
I02: How can I overwrite the knowledge of the info-tag from
wml::std:info?
I03: How can I combine the gfont- with the href-tag?
I04: How can I combine the gfont- with the rollover-tag?
Error messages:
E01: Cannot load "/tmp/wml..." for unprotection
E02: ePerl:Error: Perl runtime error
GENERAL QUESTIONS
G01: What is WML?
WML is a free and extensible Webdesigner’s off-line HTML
generation toolkit for Unix, distributed under the GNU General
Public License (GPL v2).
WML consists of a control frontend driving up to nine backends in
a sequential pass-oriented filtering scheme. Each backend provides
one particular core language. For maximum power WML additionally
ships with a well-suited set of include files which provide
higher-level features build on top of the backends core languages.
While not trivial and idiot proof WML provides most of the core
features real hackers always wanted for HTML generation.
G02: WML is distributed as free software, does this mean I also can use
it free of charge?
Yes, WML can be distributed free of charge and used free of charge
without any exceptions. You can even use WML to generate a
commercial website, no problem. But please give credit to the
author where credit is due. Either by using wml::std::info(3)
which includes a WML identifier or by explicitly saying somewhere
on the generated website that you used WML. This just would be
fair.
G03: Why is WML a toolkit of disjunct programs instead of one big
integrated program?
The first reason is because WML was born out of the need to
generate a huge webarea in spring 1997
(http://www.engelschall.com/sw/) and an appropriate tool had to be
found in finite time. So the author decided to use maximum
software leverage and just compiled a toolkit of existing programs
and only programmed the missing stuff itself.
After this approach showed that WML is flexible and powerful
enough as the solution to generate huge webareas, the author
started to compactify it and stripped the toolkit to its essential
parts. But it is still a toolkit, even when you have only one
frontend to control the parts.
G04: Which tools are included in the WML distribution?
Well, you certainly know "wml", the front-end for WML. But there
are other cool front-ends for the most useful tasks:
"wmk" - Website META Language Make
Build your web pages without writing Makefiles.
"wmd" - Website META Language Documentation Browser
This is your visa for all the documentation you want.
"wmb" - Website META Language Bug Reporting Tool
The preferred way to report a bug, this tool will send a mail
to the maintainer with your problem and the characteristics of
your installation.
"wmu" - Website META Language Upgrade Utility
Upgrade and build new versions of WML like a charm, with the
same options as those of your current installation.
G05: WML is as powerful as it can, but are there even any restrictions?
Sure, WML has some restrictions which cannot be eliminated easily.
o there is no real debugging mode which makes tracing back of
problems very hard, especially for the ePerl pass. Currently
the best way to debug is to use the -p option with args ‘1’,
then ‘12’ then ‘123’ etc. and comparing the result in each
step.
o the WML language is very complex because of the 9 independent
languages which are used intermixed. Because of this WML is not
easy to understand and use for the average webdesigner.
G06: Where do I find documentation?
o Invoke the Documentation Browser by typing wmd and navigate
through the installed documentation.
o The WML Online documentation is located at
http://www.engelschall.com/sw/wml/docs
The webpages are the same as the ones viewed with wmd.
G07: Is there any official support for WML?
Yes, there is. First there is an official support mailing list for
WML users:
sw-wml@engelschall.com
Here you can reach the WML author Ralf S. Engelschall, the current
maintainer Denis Barbier, and the other people who use WML and
which can help you in case of problems. Use this forum to spread
your WML-related ideas and suggestion, too. Feel free to ask
anything WML-related you want.
To subscribe to this Majordomo-controlled mailing list, just send
an E-mail to majordomo@engelschall.com with only
subscribe sw-wml you@domain.dom
in the body (leave the subject empty). After sending this,
Majordomo will respond with an authentication challenge which has
to send back again for security reasons (to avoid that others
subscribe you without your ok). Now you are successfully
subscribed to this list.
Second you can directly contact Ralf S. Engelschall
<rse@engelschall.com> or Denis Barbier <barbier@engelschall.com>
via E-mail in case of very important problems.
G08: How can I send a bug report to the author?
You have four options:
Bug Reporting Tool WMb
This is the recommended way because it automatically includes
all parameters of your WML installation in the bug report
which (most of the time) is essentially for the author to be
able to successfully solve your problem. Just run the wmb
program and enter your problem description. But make sure you
have at least a workable E-mail link to the Internet, because
WMb wants to send the bug report via E-mail to
rse@engelschall.com.
Bug Reporting Webpage
This is the general bug report webpage on
http://www.engelschall.com/sw/bugreport/
for all programs from Ralf S. Engelschall. Please include your
‘wml -V3’ output, too.
Mailing List
This is the official support mailing list for WML which can be
contacted via
sw-wml@engelschall.com
Direct Contact
This is the last chance, if all others failed. Just send your
problem directly to the maintainer via barbier@engelschall.com
G09: I really want to use WML for textprocessing because it’s such
powerful, isn’t it?
Yes, WML is, but only for HTML generation.
Although WML provides a lot of hot features (like Slicing or
Diversion) one often also wants for textprocessing, WML is not a
general textprocessing language. WML is HTML-dependend at a lot
of edges and it lacks features which a text-processor really needs
(like paragraph formatting, footnote support, etc). And even if
you really decide to use WML for writing other stuff than HTML,
you should be as crazy as you have time. Because WML is slow
compared with any general textprocessing tool like TeX or even
SGML-Tools. For its target format HTML this was and is never a
problem, because the largest Webpage is never greater then
approximately 10-100 KB. But for real textprocessing this size is
peanuts.
So, please don’t think about using WML for text-processing, even
if one of your primary target formats is HTML. Instead use a
language like LaTeX2HTML, SDF or SGML-Tools to create the HTML
format and only post-process this via WML. In other words: Use WML
only for the dirty work of including the generated HTML stuff into
your webpages. But don’t think any longer about using WML as a
text-processor.
QUESTIONS ABOUT PASSES
P01: How can I avoid conflicts with a particular WML pass?
When you are sure you don’t need this particular pass, you can use
WML option -p and just leave out the number of the pass.
P02: How can I avoid conflicts with a particular WML pass for only some
areas of the input file?
Use the internal "<protect>" container tag which entirely protects
its body from evaluation by any pass. To protect the body from
evaluation by a particular pass only, you can use "<protect
pass=N>".
P03: Is there a way to change pass order?
Yes, since WML 1.7.3, you may change it with the -p flag. But you
are warned this should be used by WML gurus only and for very
particular reasons. For some internal reasons, processing will
always stop after pass 9, even if you specify additional passes.
This is a feature and is not subject to change on future releases.
P04: Why shall I not change original pass order?
WML has been designed to use passes in numerical order. This
feature has a strong influence on how WML include files are
written and there is no warranty these include files will still
work when changing pass order.
QUESTIONS ABOUT INCLUDE FILES
I01: How can I install or activate my own include files?
There are many ways, but the most elegant and useful way is the
following: First create a directory named $HOME/.wml/ and then a
directory named $HOME/.wml/home/ via
$ cd $HOME
$ mkdir .wml
$ mkdir .wml/home
Then create a $HOME/.wmlrc file with at least the following
contents:
-I .wml
-D HOME~.
Now just install your private include file foo.tmpl as
$HOME/.wml/home/foo.tmpl and you are automatically be able to use
it via
#use tmpl::home::foo
from within any WML source.
I02: How can I overwrite the knowledge of the info-tag from
wml::std:info?
Because the "<info>" tag constructs its information out of
"WML_GEN_XXXX" variables which theirself can be overwritten by the
-D option, you can just do this in your $HOME/.wmlrc file. For
instance the authors $HOME/.wmlrc file contains the following
three lines:
-D WML_GEN_REALNAME="Ralf S. Engelschall"
-D WML_GEN_USERNAME=rse
-D WML_GEN_HOSTNAME=engelschall.com
The most important one here is "WML_SRC_HOSTNAME" for the
construction of the email address. Because WML cannot know the
email domainname we really have to help it here.
I03: How can I combine the gfont- with the href-tag?
Just put the "<gfont>" tag directly into the "name" attribute of
"<href>":
<href name="<gfont>The Hyperlink Text</gfont>"
url="http://...">
I04: How can I combine the gfont- with the rollover-tag?
Use "<gfont>"’s "notag" in combination with its "file" attribute
as follows:
<gfont file=button-n.gif bgcolor="#ffffff" notag>Text</gfont>
<gfont file=button-o.gif bgcolor="#ccccff" notag>Text</gfont>
<rollover src=button-n.gif oversrc=button-o.gif url="http://...">
ERROR MESSAGES
E01: Cannot load "/tmp/wml..." for unprotection
One pass did not produce any output. This message certainly
indicates a WML’s bug, and so should be reported.
E02: ePerl:Error: Perl runtime error
An error occurred during pass 3 ("eperl"). The contents of the
standard error channel is printed and may contain useful
information for debugging.
SEE ALSO
wml_intro(7), wml_tutorial(7), wml_tags(7), wml(1), wml::all(3).