##
##  WML Introduction
##  Copyright (c) 1997 Ralf S. Engelschall, All Rights Reserved.
##

=encoding utf8

=head1 NAME

WML Introduction - An introduction to WML's basic concepts

=head1 DESCRIPTION

WML is a free HTML generation toolkit for Unix, internally consisting of 9
independent languages. The main idea of WML is a sequential filtering scheme
where each language provides one of 9 processing passes.  So the frontend
F<wml> reads I<inputfile> (or from C<stdin> if I<inputfile> is a dash or
completely missing), applies passes 1-9 (or only the I<passes> specified by
B<-p>) and finally produces one or more I<outputfile>s.

WML implements a total of three essential concepts which interact with each
other:


=head2 CONCEPT 1: SEQUENTIAL FILTERING SCHEME

This concept implements the various language features by making use of maximum
software leverage, i.e. WML is built on top of 9 languages which are run in a
well-ordered fashion by the F<wml> frontend.

=over

=item B<Pass 1: Source Reading and Include File Expansion>

 Processing:     explicit
 Implementation: Include Pre-Processor (IPP)
 Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
 See Also:       wml_p1_ipp(3)

B<Description:>

This first pass reads I<inputfile> and expands all inlined include file
directives by (perhaps recursively) substituting them with the contents of the
corresponding file.  The file itself will be read from the current working
directory or from a list of dedicated include directories (compiled in ones
and also given via option B<-I>). When C<name=value> pairs are appended to the
include directive C<$(name)> is expanded to C<value> in this particular
include file and all its recursively included files.  Additionally this Pass
provides an End-Of-Line continuation feature and three special strings.
``C<__FILE__>'' and ``C<__LINE__>'' expand to the current include file and
line number while ``C<__END__>'' terminates the reading of the current include
file.

B<Summary Of Essential Features:>

  #include 'file.wml' [name[=value] ...]
  #include "file.wml" [name[=value] ...]
  #include <category/file.wml> [name[=value] ...]
  #use wml::category::file [name[=value] ...]

  some text which is \
      continued at this line

  $(name)

  __FILE__, __LINE__
  __END__

B<Example:>

  #use wml::std::tags
  This FooBar, contained in file __FILE__, line __LINE__.

  __END__
  Documentation of FooBar...

=item B<Pass 2: High-Level Macro Construct Expansion>

 Processing:     explicit
 Implementation: Macro Processor for HTML Documents (mp4h)
 Author:         Denis Barbier <barbier@engelschall.com>
 See Also:       wml_p2_mp4h(1)
                 http://www.engelschall.com/sw/mp4h/

B<Description:>

This is the HTML-like macro definition and expansion pass. Here new HTML
tags are defined via C<E<lt>define-tag fooE<gt>> and later expanded at
the location of their usage (C<E<lt>fooE<gt>>.  The goal of this pass is
to create new HTML tags which encapsulate either raw text or even
programmed functionality of Pass 3 (ePerl).

B<Summary Of Essential Features:>

  <define-tag foo>
  ...%attributes...
  </define-tag>

  <define-tag bar endtag=required>
  ...%attributes...%body...
  </define-tag>

  <foo ...>
  <bar ...>...</bar>

B<Example:>

  <define-tag me>RSE</define-tag>
  This is <me>.

=item B<Pass 3: Programming Construct Expansion>

 Processing:     explicit
 Implementation: Embedded Perl 5 Language (ePerl)
 Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
 See Also:       wml_p3_eperl(1)
                 http://www.engelschall.com/sw/eperl/

B<Description:>

In this pass the real programming takes place. The used language is Larry
Wall's Perl 5 scripting language. The language constructs are bristled into
the HTML markup code by the use of begin (C<E<lt>:>) and end (C<:E<gt>>)
delimiters. Additionally this pass provides some nice shortcut: First a
<#if..#elsif..#else..#endif> construct which gets expanded to the
corresponding Perl construct, second a shorthand (C<E<lt>:= ...:E<gt>>) for
the construct (C<E<lt>: print ...:E<gt>> which is used most of the time.  And
there is a container tag in F<wml::std::tags> which provides the more
high-level container tag C<E<lt>perlE<gt>>.

B<Summary Of Essential Features:>

  <perl> ...Perl 5 constructs... </perl>
  <: ...Perl 5 constructs... :>
  <:= ... :>

B<Example:>

  #use wml::std::tags

  <perl>
  sub isotime {
      my ($time) = @_;

      my ($sec, $min, $hour, $mday, $mon, $year, $wday, $yday, $isdst) =
          localtime($time);
      my ($str) = sprintf("%04d-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d:%02d",
           $year+1900, $mon+1, $mday, $hour, $min, $sec);
      return $str;
  }
  </perl>

  The current date is <:= &isotime(time()) :>.

=item B<Pass 4: Low-Level Macro Construct Expansion>

 Processing:     explicit
 Implementation: GNU m4
 Author:         Ren'e Seindal (FSF)
 See Also:       wml_p4_gm4(1)
                 http://www.gnu.mit.edu/

B<Description:>

In this pass another macro processor run takes place. While in pass 2 a macro
processor with a HTML-like syntax was used for high-level macro programming,
this pass uses a macro processor for low-level programming. Mainly this pass
is intended to provide low-level symbol and function definitions
(C<m4_define()>. There is a definition in F<wml::std::tags> which provides a
more high-level usage via the C<E<lt>symbolE<gt>> tag.

I<Notice:> This pass is run under a special environment: First, all m4 builtin
macros have to be prefixed with "C<m4_>". Second, all variables which are
defined by WML (both internal ones and the ones from the B<-D> option) are
directly accessible via symbols prefixed with C<m4_>, i.e. variable C<NAME> is
interpolated when C<m4_NAME> occurs. Third, the quoting characters are
disabled per default to prevent problems with the generated content. If you
need quotes (for instance in include files) you have to enable them via
C<m4>C<_quotes> and disable them later via C<m4>C<_noquotes>.

B<Summary Of Essential Features:>

  m4_quotes
  m4_define(`name', `value')
  m4_noquotes

  <symbol name value>

B<Example:>

  #use wml::std::tags
  <symbol bar BAZ>

  foo bar quux

=item B<Pass 5: Diversion Filter>

 Processing:     explicit
 Implementation: Divert
 Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
 See Also:       wml_p5_divert(3)

B<Description:>

In this pass a flexible and powerful diversion filter is applied. This is
intended to provide a mechanism to change and intermix the order of data
blocks. Do not intermix this with neither the general macro mechanisms of pass
2 and 4 nor the less powerful C<divert> mechanism of GNU m4.  The idea is to
define I<locations> (via C<{#NAME#}>) at any point and fill
such locations later by diverting the data flow to it (via C<{#NAME#:>
and C<:#NAME#}>) at another point. What makes this filter such powerful is
the fact that both the definition points and the diversion points can be done
in any order and they can even be nested.  Again WML provides high-level
support tags in F<wml::std::tags> for this functionality.

B<Summary Of Essential Features:>

  {#NAME#}
  <dump NAME>

  {#NAME#:
  data for location `NAME'
  :##}

  <enter NAME>
  data for location `NAME'
  <leave>

  <divert NAME>
  data for location `NAME'
  </divert>

B<Example:>

  <table>
  <tr>
  <td><dump LBORDER></td>
  <td><dump BODY></td>
  <td><dump RBORDER></td>
  </tr>
  </table>

  <divert LBORDER>
  Stuff for the left border
  </divert>

  <divert RBORDER>
  Stuff for the right border
  </divert>

  <divert BODY>
  The main data
  </divert>

=item B<Pass 6: Character and String Substitution>

 Processing:     explicit
 Implementation: Area Subst (ASubst)
 Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
 See Also:       wml_p6_asubst(3)

B<Description:>

In this pass single characters or substrings are substituted within dedicated
areas (delimited by C<{: ... :}>).  The intend is to support ISO-Latin-1 or
other special characters which will be entered as 8 Bit character codes and
are substituted by their HTML entity-encoding string. Do not intermix this
with macro-expansion of Pass 2 or 4. This is generalized regular expression
based substitution pass where you can use Perl's C<s/../../> and C<tr/../../>
commands to specify the substitutions. These can be placed anywhere inside the
substitution area and just have to be marked by C<[[...]]> delimiters. But the
commands are always applied to the whole area.

B<Summary Of Essential Features:>

  {: ...text..[[s/../../flags]]..
     ...text..[[tr/../../flags]].. :}

B<Example:>

  {: [[s|ä|&auml;|]] [[s|ü|&uuml;|]]
  Foo Bar Baz Quux with Umlauts ä and ü
  :}

=item B<Pass 7: Markup Code Fixup>

 Processing:     implicit
 Implementation: HTMLfix
 Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
 See Also:       wml_p7_htmlfix(3)

B<Description:>

In this pass some commonly known HTML markup code fixups are done.  For
instance missing C<WIDTH> and C<HEIGHT> attributes for all C<IMG> tags are
calculated and added, C<ALT> tags are added where missing, missing `C<#>'
characters in front of hextriple color attributes are added, numeric attribute
values are surrounded by quotes, obsolete HTML markup code like the
proprietary C<E<lt>centerE<gt>> tag is replaced by new standard HTML 3.2 tags
(C<E<lt>div align=centerE<gt>>), etc. pp.

=item B<Pass 8: Markup Code Stripping>

 Processing:     implicit
 Implementation: HTMLstrip
 Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
 See Also:       wml_p8_htmlfix(3)

B<Description:>

Because macro definitions add newlines to the output (or you have to always
use "C<...>E<lt>C</define-tag>E<gt>C<;;;>", etc), additional comments
shell-style would be useful and whitespaces can often be stripped from HTML
markup code without changing the result, this special HTML markup code
reducement pass is done. The amount of stripping can be controlled by the WML
option B<-O>. Default is B<-O2> which does a really good job without
destroying anything. There is one special feature one should know: This pass
recognizes pre-formatted areas ( C<E<lt>preE<gt>..E<lt>/preE<gt>>) and skips
them. Additionally when you want some area of your input file Threaten like
pre-formatted, then this Pass also supports its own container tag named
C<E<lt>nostripE<gt>...E<lt>/nostripE<gt>>. This has the same effect like
C<E<lt>preE<gt>> but is itself stripped, too.

=item B<Pass 9: Markup Code Splitting and Output Generation>

 Processing:     implicit/explicit
 Implementation: Slice
 Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
 See Also:       wml_p9_slice(1)
                 http://www.engelschall.com/sw/slice/

B<Description:>

The last and final pass is a really tricky one again, because one feature is
still not implemented. We need some way to conditionally create output to
different output files. To accomplish this another source file construct
(C<[NAME:...:NAME]>) is recognized which defines so-called I<slices>.  Those
slices are (possibly overlapped or nested) named areas of the input file which
can be used via WML's B<-o> option. This option can contain a I<slice-term> in
front of the filename which selects the slices to be written to the output
file. Such slice-terms are actually set theory terms where slices with the
same name define a set.

B<Summary Of Essential Features:>

  [NAME: ... :NAME]
  [NAME: ... :]

B<Example:>

  [EN:Welcome to:][DE:Willkommen zu:] Foo Bar Baz Quux!

=back



=head2 CONCEPT 2: WMLRC FILE HIERARCHY AND WMLOPTS VARIABLE

The second essential idea of WML is the use of F<.wmlrc> files and a
C<WMLOPTS> environment variable for additionally command line options.  On
startup the frontend F<wml> first processes all options found in C<WMLOPTS>,
then it reads all options from F<$HOME/.wmlrc> followed by the options of all
F<.wmlrc> files found in all parent directories (i.e. F<../.wmlrc>,
F<../../.wmlrc>, etc) of the directory containing input file.  And finally it
processes all options given on the command line.   For instance this feature
provides you with the ability to setup defaults via B<-D> options in the
F<.wmlrc> file at the top of your Webarea.

And there is one more special case: The option form

   -DNAME~VALUE

is always sticky to its location, i.e. it always gets evaluated for its local
directory context instead of the current working directory where F<wml> was
started. Use this to easily introduce path or URL variables which adjust
automatically to the current context of the generated webpage.



=head2 CONCEPT 3: AUTO-ADJUSTED URL AND FILENAME VARIABLES

The third essential idea of WML is the above shortly described variable
adjustment concept which can be used via variable interpolation.  The frontend
F<wml> provides a B<-D> option for defining variables which get interpolated
in each pass:

  -DNAME=VALUE
  -DNAME~VALUE

For both forms the value can be interpolated via E<lt>C<get-var NAME>E<gt>
inside Pass 2 and via C<E<lt>:=$NAME:E<gt>> in Pass 3. The difference between
the two forms is the tricky part of adjustment here:

=over 4

=item C<-D NAME=VALUE>

Here the variable NAME gets statically set to VALUE. Each time you interpolate
the variable the result is exactly VALUE.

=item C<-D NAME~VALUE>

Here the variable NAME gets initialized with VALUE and VALUE will be treated
as either a (not fully qualified) URL or filename.  When you interpolate the
variable the result is VALUE if the current working directory is the same as
where you used the B<-D> option (either where you run the frontend F<wml> or a
F<.wmlrc> file). Else the result is VALUE relative path-adjusted for the
current working directory.

=back

On the first look this seems useless, but combined with CONCEPT 2 this
provides a very essential feature. Here it provides a powerful mechanism to
automatically let URLs or pathnames re-calculated for the local context.  For
instance when you define C<-DROOT~.> in your top-level F<.wmlrc> file then the
variable C<ROOT> will be interpolated to `C<.>' at the top-level, to `C<..>'
at the first subdir level, to `C<../..>' at the second subdir level, etc.  Use
this for creating navigation bars or URL references across subtrees.

=head1 MORE INFORMATION

Now you've seen the various core languages of WML. For a step-by-step
introduction to this functionality and to see real examples, I recommend you
to read the WML tutorial in wml_tutorial(7) now.

Additionally can can step through the set of available standard include files
WML ships with. Start with the top-level include file wml::all(3).

=head1 SEE ALSO

wml_tutorial(7),
wml_tags(7).

wml_p1_ipp(3),
wml_p2_mp4h(1),
wml_p3_eperl(1),
wml_p4_gm4(1),
wml_p5_divert(3),
wml_p6_asubst(3),
wml_p7_htmlfix(3),
wml_p8_htmlstrip(3),
wml_p9_slice(1).

wml::all(3)

=cut

##EOF##
