WML
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions on
WML
This is the Frequently Asked Question
(FAQ) list with answers on
WML. It is
divided into question/answer parts, each answering one particular topic.
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G01: What is
WML?
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G02:
WML is distributed as free software, does this mean
I also can use it free of charge?
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G03: Why is
WML a toolkit of disjunct programs instead of
one big integrated program?
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G04: Which tools are included in the
WML distribution?
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G05:
WML is as powerful as it can, but are there
even any restrictions?
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G06: Where do
I find documentation?
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G07: Is there any official support for
WML?
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G08: How
I can
I send a bug report to the author?
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G09:
I really want to use
WML for textprocessing because it's such
powerful, isn't it?
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P01: How can
I avoid conflicts with a particular
WML pass?
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P02: How can
I avoid conflicts with a particular
WML pass
for only some areas of the input file?
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P03: Is there a way to change pass order?
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P04: Why shall
I not change original pass order?
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I01: How can
I install or activate my own include files?
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I02: How can
I overwrite the knowledge of the info-tag from wml::std:info?
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I03: How can
I combine the gfont- with the href-tag?
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I04: How can
I combine the gfont- with the rollover-tag?
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E01: Cannot load
/tmp/wml... for unprotection
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E02: ePerl:Error: Perl runtime error
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G01: What is
WML?
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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.
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G02:
WML is distributed as free software, does this mean
I also can use it free of charge?
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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.
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G03: Why is
WML a toolkit of disjunct programs instead of
one big integrated program?
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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.
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G04: Which tools are included in the
WML distribution?
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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
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Build your web pages without writing Makefiles.
wmd - Website
META Language Documentation Browser
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This is your visa for all the documentation you want.
wmb - Website
META Language Bug Reporting Tool
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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
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Upgrade and build new versions of
WML like a charm, with the same
options as those of your current installation.
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G05:
WML is as powerful as it can, but are there
even any restrictions?
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Sure,
WML has some restrictions which cannot be eliminated easily.
- o
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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
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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.
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G06: Where do
I find documentation?
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- o
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Invoke the Documentation Browser by typing wmd and navigate through
the installed documentation.
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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.
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G07: Is there any official support for
WML?
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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.
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G08: How can
I send a bug report to the author?
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You have four options:
- Bug Reporting Tool WMb
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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
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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
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This is the official support mailing list for
WML which can be
contacted via
sw-wml@engelschall.com
- Direct Contact
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This is the last chance, if all others failed. Just send your problem directly
to the maintainer via barbier@engelschall.com
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G09:
I really want to use
WML for textprocessing because it's such
powerful, isn't it?
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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.
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P01: How can
I avoid conflicts with a particular
WML pass?
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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.
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P02: How can
I avoid conflicts with a particular
WML pass
for only some areas of the input file?
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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>.
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P03: Is there a way to change pass order?
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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.
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P04: Why shall
I not change original pass order?
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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.
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I01: How can
I install or activate my own include files?
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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
from within any
WML source.
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I02: How can
I overwrite the knowledge of the info-tag from wml::std:info?
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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.
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I03: How can
I combine the gfont- with the href-tag?
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Just put the
<gfont> tag directly into the name attribute
of <href>:
<href name="<gfont>The Hyperlink Text</gfont>"
url="http://...";>
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I04: How can
I combine the gfont- with the rollover-tag?
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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://...";>
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E01: Cannot load
/tmp/wml... for unprotection
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One pass did not produce any output. This message certainly indicates
a WML's bug, and so should be reported.
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E02: ePerl:Error: Perl runtime error
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An error occurred during pass 3 (
wml_p3_eperl). The contents of the
standard error channel is printed and may contain useful information for
debugging.
wml_intro(7),
wml_tutorial(7),
wml_tags(7),
wml(1),
wml::all(3).
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