GTML - an HTML pre-processor
* Introduction
* How does GTML work ?
* Is GTML for you ?
* GTML features.
* Downloading GTML
* Running GTML
* Other HTML pre-processors
* Terms of license
* A little bit of GTML history
_________________________________________________________________
HTML is a powerful markup language for individual Web pages, but it
has some serious limitations for maintaining entire Web sites (i.e. a
collection of Web pages which needs to be kept consistent).
GTML is an HTML pre-processor which adds some extra features specially
designed for maintaining multiple Web pages.
How does it work?
You embed GTML commands among the HTML in your source files. GTML
reads and processes the GTML commands, but leaves the rest of the text
unchanged (so it will work straight away on your existing Web pages).
HTML files generated by GTML are just like any other HTML files.
Because GTML doesn't attempt to interpret your HTML commands in any
way, it's fully compatible with all versions of HTML, and doesn't
require any specific browser or server.
Is GTML for you?
If you write the HTML in your Web pages by hand using a simple text
editor, then you'll find GTML useful. If, on the other hand, you use a
sophisticated graphical tool to generate your HTML, you probably won't
be able to use GTML. There are three reasons for this:
* Your sophisticated tool won't understand the GTML commands, and
might even complain violently about them.
* GTML operates in a command-line batch mode, and your sophisticated
tool probably operates from a graphical environment.
* The source for GTML is in files ending in .gtm (or .gtml), and it
generates the .html files. Your sophisticated tool probably
generates the .html files itself.
Features
Here are some of the things you can do with GTML:
* Create a project file with the names of all your Web pages, so you
can update them all with one simple click or command.
* Process only files which sources have changed directly, or with
the help of makefiles.
* Generate a makefile to control the process of your Web pages,
based on their dependencies. [** NEW **]
* Give a specific alias to a filename, useable as constants, so that
it is easy to move files and have links preserved.
* Specify a tree-like hierarchy of Web pages, so you can add Next,
Previous and Up links automatically to your site.
* Automatically generate a map of your site, with the possibility of
customizing the way this table of contents will look like. [** NEW
**]
* Use named constants for HTML fragments to save typing, ensure
consistency and make changes easily.
* Use environment variables as named constants.
* Include header, footer and other common files into all your HTML
files. This doesn't require Server-Side Includes.
* Include timestamps (in any format you like) to show the time of
last process, or of last modification.
* Use conditional commands to create different versions of the
output under different circumstances.
* Generate output to different directories to generate different
versions of your site (for example, a Frames version and a
non-Frames version).
* Change extensions of output files from .html to whatever you want,
so that you may, for instance, use MultiViews options of Apache
server, or create non-HTML files. [** NEW **]
* Guard special characters `<', `>' and `&' in normal text so that
they don't get confused with HTML commands.
* Define your own characters translations, so that you may easily
input your non-ASCII characters into GTML source. [** NEW **]
* Embed Perl or shell code into your source, so that you may easily
generate pages with computed information. [** NEW **]
* Generate pages with all superfluous HTML code removed, so that
readers retrieve them faster and may save bandwidth. [** NEW **]
All the GTML features and commands are described on the GTML Reference
page.
Downloading GTML
GTML is written in Perl. If you don't have Perl, it's easy to obtain
it on perl.com.
There are two methods to download GTML:
* Download GTML Perl script, and save it to a file called gtml.pl.
If you're running this under UNIX, edit the first line to point
to the location of your version of Perl, and give the execute
right to the file.
* Download GTML archives containing Perl script as well as
documentations. Archives are available in zip format or gzipped
tar format.
The home page of GTML is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/gtml/, and
archives may be found at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=100737.
Running GTML
GTML source files end in .gtm (or .gtml), not .html. If you're using
GTML on existing HTML files, simply rename them with the ending .gtm
(or .gtml).
GTML is run from the command line, like this:
perl gtml.pl fred.gtm harry.gtm bill.gtm
(The UNIX version won't need the Perl at the front, so long as the
script is executable.)
The output of this command will be in fred.html, harry.html and
bill.html.
If you have a GTML project file, you include this on the command line.
In this case, it's not necessary to list any of the files in the
project as well.
Remember that you can use -D on the command line to create named
constants. You can have as many -D options as you like. Make sure they
appear before the file names to which they apply. For example, if you
say:
perl gtml.pl -DNAME=Fred fred.gtm harry.gtm -DTYPE=car bill.gtm
then NAME is defined for all three files and TYPE is defined for
bill.gtm only.
By default, GTML will try to process some project file. It will look
at these configuration files in this order:
* $HOME/.gtmlrc
* $HOME/gtml.conf
* .gtmlrc
* gtml.conf
Thoses files, if they exist, are parsed before command line is
processed.
You may have a look at the source of the documentation pages of GTML
in the source directory. The project file is called gtml.gtp.
Other HTML pre-processors
Here is a list of other HTML pre-processors that I know of, in case
GTML will not satisfy your needs:
* Chpp
* Frontier
* Meta-HTML
* PHP
* QML
* Webtools
* WML
* Wpp
Licensing
GTML is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Copyright © 1996-1999 Gihan Perera (gihan@pobox.com)
Copyright © 1999 Bruno Beaufils (beaufils@lifl.fr)
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
Some history
For a long time I was looking for a way of maintaining some of the
sites that I set up for the research team which I am member of. I
wanted to get a tool which would enable me to easily change the look
and feel of all pages of a site, and easily move pages of a site from
one location to another.
I then used all my favourite search engines on the web, and found some
pages, describing such tools. I tried some. They all missed something,
from ease of use, to important features. When I tried GTML, from
Gihan, I found it was pretty cool, but lacking some important features
that I needed.
I wrote to Gihan asking him to add those features which I needed,
since I had no Perl programming skill. He told me that he doesn't have
time to do that in the near future. So I decided to read his code, and
to learn Perl with his script.
The script was pretty well written and I learnt Perl, or at least
understand how GTML worked very fast. It was then easy to add the
features that I needed in it. I then asked Gihan if he would mind if I
distribute GTML under the GNU General Public License, since his
license policy was not as open as GPL, and he accepted.
Then I just updated some of the docs, prepared an archive, in the GNU
spirit, and that was it.
My biggest question was to understand where the name of the tool come
from, and after some reflexions I got two possible answers:
* `G' is the letter just before H, and GTML source production comes
just before HTML file one.
* `G' is the first letter of Gihan's first name.
Well this is not a question anymore, Gihan told me the truth. Guess
what? I found it: the first of my two previous hypotheses is the right
one. (Well I hope that as time goes by it will be interpreted as GNU
:-)
After I distributed it on my web pages, and after announcing it only
on Freshmeat, I got some feedback from users coming from all around
the world. I added some features which were asked of me, but realized
that the source of the script needed some reorganization, and that
there were some bugs in GTML.
I have done this source reorganization, and so have been able to
fix bugs, and add a lot of fancy features. So now I'm waiting for
users' feedback, in order to verify that I did not add bugs :-),
and that GTML is now sufficiently stable.
In one month or so I hope to be able to say that it does. So I really
need your help for that, please give me some feedback!.
I will not add any features, before the next stable release.
I hope my version of GTML will help you as it helps me.
--Bruno, 31 August 1999
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Last modification: 1999/9/13 at 01:44
Copyright © 1996-1999 Gihan Perera (gihan@pobox.com)
Copyright © 1999 Bruno Beaufils (beaufils@lifl.fr)
