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).