Provided by: dacs_1.4.28b-3ubuntu1_amd64 bug

NAME

       dacs_transform - rule-based document transformation

SYNOPSIS

       dacs_transform [dacsoptions[1]]

DESCRIPTION

       This web service is part of the DACS suite.

       dacs_transform can perform a variety of transformations on an original document to produce
       a new document. Transformations such as redaction, insertion, and replacement are
       available. What makes the program interesting is that any transformation can depend on a
       rule that is evaluated at run-time, allowing a new document to be tailored for a specific
       user or context.

       The program looks for embedded markup (meta-information) called directives in the input
       document. A directive specifies a conditional (rule-based) or unconditional operation that
       is evaluated at that point in the document to determine the output text that is to be
       interpolated into the program's output. Text outside of a directive is copied verbatim to
       the program's output.

       One application of this software is to produce different versions of documentation from
       the same input. For example, consider a requirement to produce technical documentation for
       a series of printers where the printers are substantially the same (their documentation
       shares a lot of the same text and graphics) but each model has unique features or
       capabilities. Instead of producing a single manual that describes all models, which makes
       the manual larger and more complicated than necessary, this software provides a convenient
       way to create model-specific documentation from the same input. This means that the
       documentation common to all printers is shared by all of the manuals, yet the manual for
       each printer is easily customized for the particular printer.

           Notedacs_transform is similar in concept or purpose to the Apache modules
               mod_include[2] and mod_rewrite[3]. It is not an Apache module, however, and can
               therefore be used with any web server, and provides rich, rule-based selection of
               regions for processing. It can be used in conjunction with mod_ext_filter[4]. It
               is also conceptually similar to languages like PHP[5] where ordinary content and
               special processing directives can be combined within a document.

           •   The dacstransform(1)[6] command provides similar functionality from the command
               line. The transform()[7] function is also available.

           •   dacs_transform and dacstransform can be particularly useful tools for generating
               both static and dynamic web pages from template files.

           •   For security reasons, access to dacs_transform is disabled by default. Some
               configuration capabilities and features expected in a production version have not
               been implemented. If there are multiple identities, only one identity
               (REMOTE_USER) is available during rule processing.

   Regions
       A directive delimits a region within the source document. A directive that is enabled
       processes its region in some way, otherwise the directive and its region are disabled and
       produce no output. Whether a directive is enabled or disabled depends on the DACS rule
       that is named in the directive. Zero-length regions (i.e., regions with no content) are
       allowed.

       The output that is produced by dacs_transform depends on input that is copied verbatim,
       the selection of regions in the original document, the document's rules, region
       evaluation, and the context in which the rules are evaluated. Rules can not only inspect
       the requesting user's identity (based on the environment variable REMOTE_USER), including
       roles (obtained from DACS_ROLES), they can employ C-like expressions and a variety of
       built-in functions (see dacs.exprs(5)[8]). Directives are not emitted as part of the
       transformed document.

       Every conditional region is given a name. With the exception of reserved names, region
       names have no particular significance to dacs_transform; they are simply attributes to
       which rules may refer. Each document will usually have one or more rules associated with
       it.

       For example, an author might assign a name representing a security level to each region in
       a document: public, secret, top-secret, and so on. For each of these security levels, a
       specified set of rules would be examined by dacs_transform to decide which identities are
       granted (or denied) access to the corresponding region. In this way, different users may
       be given different versions of the same source document; some users might not be able to
       view secret and top-secret content, other might be able to view all content.

       A document that combined text written in different languages might name regions English,
       French, Russian, and so on; the English regions might be enabled by dacs_transform based
       on the user's DACS role or the user's stored preference for that language. Another
       document might contain region names corresponding to time zones: PST, MST, EST, and so on.
       A rule might then require the time zone associated with the location corresponding to the
       user's apparent IP address to match that of the region being tested. Or an audio stream or
       speech synthesis content might be automatically enabled if a user has a role that
       indicates she is visually impaired.

       At present, no facility is available to assist with working with meta-information. It must
       either be added manually or generated by an application that understands how to insert
       meta-information in its output.

       Directive and Attribute Syntax
           In an HTML document served by dacs_transform, a region consists of a single directive
           or is delimited by a pair of directives. All other document content is ignored with
           respect to transformation. By default, directives are contained within HTML-style
           comments and the start of a directive is indicated by a line having the initial nine
           characters "<!--DACS" and ending with the normal HTML end-of-comment syntax, "-->".
           Such a line is unlikely to occur in a document by accident, but the syntax is
           configurable[9].

               Note
               •   Whitespace is not ignored at the beginning or end of an input line.

               •   Because the syntax for comments defined for HTML is also acceptable in SGML
                   and XML (and any similar markup language that is based on SGML),
                   dacs_transform can also work with those documents.

               •   A directive cannot be "commented out" except by modifying the line on which it
                   occurs so that the directive will not be recognized as such. That is, the
                   context in which a directive occurs with respect to the original document is
                   not considered by dacs_transform.

           A directive contains one or more attribute="value" pairs. Exactly one attribute name
           must be a directive name that indicates the operation to be performed. An attribute
           name must be a syntactically valid variable name[10]. The value must be enclosed in
           matching double quotes, single quotes, or backticks (decimal ASCII code 96). Backtick
           quotes are treated differently in that the enclosed string is evaluated as an
           expression[11]. Variables from the Env and Confnamespaces[12] are instantiated. The
           current directive's attributes are accessible in the Attr namespace; these attribute
           values are unevaluated and quoted.

           This example input contains two regions:

               <!--DACS begin="English" -->
               Hello!
               <!--DACS end="English" -->
               <!--DACS begin="French" -->
               Bonjour!
               <!--DACS end="French" -->

               Note
               •   For all directives, the region name "*" is reserved and indicates that the
                   region should be enabled without evaluating any rule. If an author wants to
                   always insert some text or an identification string, for instance, this
                   feature eliminates the need to create a rule that does nothing other than
                   return True.

               •   For all directives, a region name prefixed by the negation operator[13]
                   inverts the selection test.

               •   For all directives, regardless of the region name, an attribute named "cond"
                   may be provided. Its value is an expression that must evaluate to True for the
                   region to be processed. If a rule also applies to the directive, both the rule
                   and the expression must grant access.

           Directive names, which are described below, are reserved and have special meaning to
           dacs_transform. Unrecognized attributes are ignored but can be referenced as arguments
           by rules. A given attribute cannot appear more than once within a directive. All
           attribute names are case-insensitive.

       Negation
           A region name prefixed by the negation operator ("!") indicates that the region should
           be enabled if the rule returns False and should be disabled if it returns True. Note
           that the negation character is not part of the region name. This syntax eliminates the
           need to write separate "if-true" and "if-false" versions of the same rule, although it
           is an inefficient substitute for an if/else construct.

           For example, if a document only has public and secret regions, instead of defining one
           rule for public regions and another for secret regions, an author might simply define
           a single rule to identify secret regions and use negation:

               <!--DACS begin="!secret" -->
               This is public stuff, not secret stuff.
               <!--DACS end="!secret" -->

       Recursion
           By default, content that is included during processing of an insert, insertv, or
           expand directive is recursively processed for directives. Recursion may be disabled on
           a case-by-case basis by specifying the recurse attribute with a value of "no" (case
           insensitively). It may also be explicitly enabled by specifying the attribute value
           "yes" (case insensitively).

           A maximum stack depth is imposed, primarily to guard against infinite recursion. This
           limit is currently set to 100 at compile time.

           Variables set by outer levels can be referenced by inner levels. If variables at
           different levels have the same name, however, only the innermost value is accessible.

       Directives
           Directive Index:

            1. begin: start a region

            2. debug: emit variables for debugging

            3. end: end a region

            4. expand: insert content and interpolate variables

            5. filter: transform content

            6. filterv: transform content, verbatim

            7. id: insert an identification string

            8. insert: insert content

            9. insertv: insert content, verbatim

           10. set: set or reset variables

           begin
               The begin directive starts a region with the specified name:

                   <!--DACS begin="secret" -->

               If the region above named secret is enabled, its content is included in the
               program's output. Directives that appear in the region, including other begin
               directives, are processed. Variable references are not expanded; use the
               expand[14] directive to interpolate variable references. Every begin directive
               must have a matching end[15] directive.

               The region name (the value of the begin attribute) is accessible in rules using
               ${Args::region}.

           debug
               The debug directive can be helpful for understanding or debugging processing. It
               emits variables that exist at the point where an enabled debug directive is
               processed. This directive has no matching end directive; it is essentially a
               region with no content.

               By default, all variables in the Attrs, Conf, and DACS namespaces are emitted. The
               attribute name show can be set to Attrs, Conf, or DACS to restrict output to the
               particular namespace. The value all is equivalent to the default. Alternatively,
               the attribute name Attrs can be set to "yes" (or "no") to select (or deselect) the
               Attrs namespace. The same applies for the Conf and DACS attributes. These
               attribute names are case sensitive but their values are not.

               The emitted output is preceded by the directive prefix string in effect and
               followed by the directive suffix string in effect. It is assumed that no text is
               emitted in the debugging output that might accidentally be recognized as the
               suffix string.

           end
               The end of a region started by a begin[16], filter[17], filterv[18] or expand[14]
               directive is indicated using the end directive:

                   <!--DACS begin="secret" -->
                   This is some secret text.
                   <!--DACS end="secret" -->

               When properly balanced, regions can be nested.

           expand
               This directive expands variable references in inserted content. Also, text
               containing variable references may appear in the original content, delimited by an
               end directive.

               An expr, uri, or filename attribute may be used to specify the source of the input
               as with the insert[19] directive. Variable references in the text from these
               sources are expanded. If one of these attributes is not specified, the directive
               must be terminated by an end directive.

               Directives in the expanded text are recursively processed, modulo the recurse
               attribute (see Recursion[20]).

                   % cat inputfile
                   <!--DACS expand="*" -->
                   Nice dog, ${DACS::dog1}.
                   <!--DACS end="*" -->
                   Meow!
                   <!--DACS expand="*" cond="${DACS::dog3} eq:i 'bandito'" -->
                   Good boy, ${DACS::dog2}.
                   <!--DACS end="*" -->
                   % dacstransform -Ddog1=Auggie -Ddog2=Harley -Ddog3=Bandito < inputfile
                   Nice dog, Auggie.
                   Meow!
                   Good boy, Harley.

           filter

                   Note
                   This feature is only partially implemented. In the current implementation, a
                   filter directive must use the expr operation and may not include another
                   filter region.
               Original document content within a delimited region, if any, is replaced by new
               material using the filter directive. This directive must have a corresponding end
               directive. A newline is appended to the result; if this behaviour is undesirable,
               use filterv[18].

               Either the expr or uri operations must be specified.

               If an expr attribute is present, the original document content, including its
               final newline character, is passed to the given expression[11] as the value of the
               variable ${DACS::stdin}. The value of the expression (a string) replaces the
               region's original content. An evaluation error causes the program to terminate.

               If the uri attribute is present, it specifies a web service to which the region
               should be passed as input and the output of which should replace the original
               document content. By default, the URI is invoked using the POST method but if a
               method attribute is present it specifies the HTTP method to use. The http and
               https schemes are supported. The input is passed as an argument named CONTENT.

               If no operation attribute is provided, the original content is evaluated as an
               expression[11] and its value becomes the new content of the region.

               To interpolate the current date you might use:

                   <!--DACS filter="public" expr="strftime('%v')" -->
                   <!--DACS end="public" -->

               Or equivalently:

                   <!--DACS filter="public" -->
                   strftime("%v")
                   <!--DACS end="public" -->

                   Tip
                   To simply substitute variable values into the original content, use the
                   expand[14] directive or the expand()[21] function. For example:

                       <!--DACS filter="*" expr="expand(${DACS::stdin})" section="Hello, world" -->
                       <h1>${Attr::section}</h1>
                       <!--DACS end="*" -->

                   Or, alternatively:

                       <!--DACS filter="*" section="Hello, world" -->
                       expand("<h1>${Attr::section}</h1>")
                       <!--DACS end="*" -->

                   In either variation, the three lines in the document are replaced by a single
                   line:

                       <h1>Hello, world</h1>

                   Tip
                   A filter directive with an expr or uri attribute and an empty region can be
                   written more simply using an insert directive.

           filterv
               This directive is identical to filter[17] except that no newline is appended.

           id
               If the region is enabled, the directive is replaced by the current time and date,
               and a DACS version identification string. This directive has no matching end
               directive; it is essentially a region with no content.

               For example, the directive:

                   <!--DACS id="*" -->

               will be replaced by a line similar to this:

                   <--DACS Generated 6-Sep-2007@11:37:43 by dacstransform DACS 1.4.20
                    Release date 13-Aug-07 09:39:03 (revid 2034) on example.com -->

               Note that the replacement line appears as a comment in the emitted document and
               will pass through dacs_transform unaltered.

           insert
               Document text is read from a specified source using the insert directive. Exactly
               one filename, uri, or expr attribute must be provided. Variable references in the
               inserted content are not expanded - if that is required, use the expand[14]
               directive. Directives in the inserted content are not processed if recursion[20]
               has been disabled.

                   <!--DACS Interpolate browser-specific JavaScript -->
                   <!--DACS insert="mozilla" filename="/dacs/dacs_transform/js/js1.html" -->
                   <!--DACS insert="ie" filename="/dacs/dacs_transform/js/js2.html" -->
                   <!--DACS insert="netscape" filename="/dacs/dacs_transform/js/js3.html" -->

                   <!--DACS insert="*" uri="http://example.com/data" -->
                   <!--DACS insert="*" expr="strftime('%v')" -->
                   <!--DACS insert="*" expr="exec('/bin/date')" -->
                   <!--DACS insert="*" expr="${Attr::arg1} + ${Attr::arg2}" arg1="10" arg2="20" -->

               The region name (the value of the insert attribute) is accessible to rules as the
               value of ${Args::region}. This directive has no matching end directive; it is
               essentially a region with no content. Like the begin and end directives, the
               insert directive names the region so that an appropriate rule can be applied.

               The filename attribute gives the pathname of a file to be inserted into the
               document at the current location. When invoked as dacs_transform, the pathname
               must be absolute (i.e., it must begin with a slash character).

               The uri attribute gives a URI that is invoked to obtain the document to be
               inserted. The GET method is used by default, but if a method attribute is present
               it specifies the HTTP method to use. The returned document is inserted at the
               current location. If the URI's scheme is file, it is equivalent to the filename
               attribute. The http and https schemes are also recognized.

               A third choice is the expr attribute. The expression[11] is evaluated and its
               result is inserted into the document; an evaluation error causes the program to
               terminate.

               Because it is needed in many cases and harmless in many others, a newline
               character is emitted after the inserted text. If this behaviour is undesirable,
               use insertv[22].

               These directives demonstrates how to expand a variable reference found in a
               template file into the current document:

                   <!--DACS insert="*" expr="expand(get('/tmp/h1_template'))" s="Section 1"-->
                   <!--DACS insert="*" expr="expand(get('/tmp/h1_template'))" s="Section 2"-->

               If the file /tmp/h1_template looks like:

                   <h1>${Attr::s}</h1>

               then these two lines would be inserted in the program's output:

                   <h1>Section 1</h1>
                   <h1>Section 2</h1>

               Equivalent but slightly simpler directives can be used for this example:

                   <!--DACS expand="*" filename="/tmp/h1_template" s="Section 1"-->
                   <!--DACS expand="*" filename="/tmp/h1_template" s="Section 2"-->

           insertv
               This directive is identical to insert[19] except that no newline is appended.

           set
               This directive is used to set variables that will exist for the remainder of the
               current scope (the document being processed) and any documents that are
               recursively processed. Setting a variable creates it or overrides its existing
               value. Any occurrences of the variable in an outer scope are unaffected, as are
               variables that are created from attributes associated with a directive.

               This directive is useful to set a variable to a string that will be used more than
               once during document processing, or to establish configuration-related variables
               in a single location. This directive can prevent having to repeatedly pass the
               same string argument as an attribute in multiple directives.

               If gfile looks like:

                   <!--DACS set="*" foo="1" bar="2" -->
                   <!--DACS debug="*" show="attrs" -->
                   <!--DACS set="*" foo="3" bar="4" -->
                   <!--DACS debug="*" show="attrs" -->
                   <!--DACS insert="*" filename="gfile2" -->
                   <!--DACS debug="*" show="attrs" -->

               and gfile2 looks like:

                   <!--DACS debug="*" show="attrs" -->
                   <!--DACS set="*" foo="5" bar="6" bazz="7" -->
                   <!--DACS debug="*" show="attrs" -->

               then processing gfile will emit this output:

                   <!--DACS Debug:
                   Attrs:
                   debug="*"
                   show="attrs"
                   set="*"
                   foo="1"
                   bar="2"
                   -->

                   <!--DACS Debug:
                   Attrs:
                   debug="*"
                   show="attrs"
                   set="*"
                   foo="3"
                   bar="4"
                   -->

                   <!--DACS Debug:
                   Attrs:
                   debug="*"
                   show="attrs"
                   insert="*"
                   filename="gfile2"
                   set="*"
                   foo="3"
                   bar="4"
                   -->

                   <!--DACS Debug:
                   Attrs:
                   debug="*"
                   show="attrs"
                   set="*"
                   foo="5"
                   bar="6"
                   bazz="7"
                   insert="*"
                   filename="gfile2"
                   -->

                   <!--DACS Debug:
                   Attrs:
                   debug="*"
                   show="attrs"
                   set="*"
                   foo="3"
                   bar="4"
                   -->

       Configuration
           Configuration variables can be set to change some of the program's defaults:

           •   transform_docs: This is the full pathname of the root directory in which original
               documents are kept. By default, the program will use a subdirectory
               ${Conf::DACS_HOME}dacs_transform/docs. (default:
               /usr/local/dacs/dacs_transform/docs)

                   Security
                   Change the default with care. In the absence of an appropriate access control
                   rule, setting the pathname to "/" or the empty string, would provide access to
                   any file on the server that can be read by this web service.

           •   transform_acls: This is the VFS specification for the rules. By default, the
               program will use ${Conf::DACS_HOME}dacs_transform/acls. (default:
               [transform-acls]dacs-fs:/usr/local/dacs/dacs_transform/acls)

           •   transform_annotation: This is the annotation to interpolate in redacted text
               instead of the default.

           •   transform_prefix: Instead of the default prefix used to introduce a directive, the
               value of this variable is used. It must appear at the beginning of a line.

           •   transform_suffix: Instead of the default prefix used to end a directive, the value
               of this variable is used.

           •   transform_rprefix: A line whose beginning matches the specified regular expression
               introduces a directive.

           •   transform_rsuffix: The end of a directive is found by matching the specified
               regular expression.

           IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") "extended" regular expressions are supported
           (regex(3)[23]).

   Web Service Arguments
       In addition to the standard CGI arguments[24], dacs_transform understands the following
       CGI arguments:

       DOC
           This value of this argument specifies the document to be transformed as a file on the
           server running dacs_transform. It is an absolute path that is remapped within a
           segregated area of the web server.

       DOCURI
           This argument specifies the document to be transformed as a URI. The URI must use the
           http or https scheme. The HTTP GET method is used to fetch the document and the URI
           may include query arguments. The URI must be properly URL-encoded.

       ANNOTATE
           If this argument is present and its value is "yes", each deleted region of text is
           denoted in the retrieved document; contiguous deleted regions are denoted only once.
           The default annotation assumes a document Content-Type of text/html.

       CONTENT_TYPE
           If this argument is present, this will be the MIME Content-Type of the returned
           document. If this argument is omitted, the program will try to guess the type based on
           the suffix of the name of the original document, or default to text/html.

DIAGNOSTICS

       The program exits 0 if everything was fine, 1 if an error occurred.

SEE ALSO

       dacstransform(1)[6], dacs.exprs(5)[11], dacs.acls(5)[25]

BUGS

       There is a lot of room for improvement and new features. Directive syntax slants towards
       the arcane; that may get worse before it gets better.

AUTHOR

       Distributed Systems Software (www.dss.ca[26])

COPYING

       Copyright2003-2013 Distributed Systems Software. See the LICENSE[27] file that accompanies
       the distribution for licensing information.

NOTES

        1. dacsoptions
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.1.html#dacsoptions

        2. mod_include
           http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_include.html

        3. mod_rewrite
           http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html

        4. mod_ext_filter
           http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_ext_filter.html

        5. PHP
           http://www.php.net/

        6. dacstransform(1)
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacstransform.1.html

        7. transform()
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.exprs.5.html#transform

        8. dacs.exprs(5)
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man//dacs/man/dacs.exprs.5.html

        9. configurable
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#configuration

       10. syntactically valid variable name
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.exprs.5.html#variable_syntax

       11. expression
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.exprs.5.html

       12. namespaces
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.exprs.5.html#reserved_namespaces

       13. negation operator
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#negation

       14. expand
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#EXPAND

       15. end
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#END

       16. begin
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#BEGIN

       17. filter
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#FILTER

       18. filterv
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#FILTERV

       19. insert
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#INSERT

       20. Recursion
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#recursion

       21. expand()
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.exprs.5.html#expand

       22. insertv
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#INSERTV

       23. regex(3)
           http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=regex&apropos=0&esektion=3&emanpath=FreeBSD+9.1-RELEASE&format=html

       24. standard CGI arguments
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.services.8.html#standard_cgi_args

       25. dacs.acls(5)
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.acls.5.html

       26. www.dss.ca
           http://www.dss.ca

       27. LICENSE
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/../misc/LICENSE