NAME

       WML - Website META Language

VERSION

       2.0.12 (16-Apr-2008)

SYNOPSIS

       wml [-I PATH] [-i PATH] [-D NAME=STR] [-D NAME~PATH] [-n] [-r] [-O level] [-o
       [SLICETERM":"]PATH[@CHMODOPT]] [-P PATH] [-E PATH] [-t] [-p STR] [-W STR] [-s] [-v [NUM]]
       [-q] [inputfile]

       wml [-V [NUM]] [-h]

DESCRIPTION

       This is the control program of the Website META Language (WML), 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 wml reads inputfile (or from stdin if inputfile is a dash or
       completely missing), applies passes 1-9 (or only the passes specified by -p) and finally
       produces one or more outputfiles.

       For more details on this processing scheme read the WML Introduction under wml_intro(7)
       and the WML Tutorial under wml_tutorial(7).

OPTIONS

       -I, --include=PATH
           Adds a directory to the list of user include paths. Use this option to set the runtime
           environment for pass 1. See wml_p1_ipp(3) for more details.

       -i, --includefile=PATH
           Pre-loads a particular include file, i.e. virtually adds a

             #include "PATH"

           at the top of inputfile. Use this to automatically include default user include files.
           If you want to include a systems include file you have to surround the PATH with angle
           brackets, for instance use ``"-i" "<foo/bar.wml>"'' to include the file foo/bar.wml
           from the system include area.  Alternatively you can use the special syntax
           ``"wml::foo::bar"'' as with the "#use" directive.

       -D, --define=NAME=STR
           Defines a variable which can be interpolated in pass 1 (IPP) via "$(NAME)", in pass 2
           (mp4h) via <"get-var NAME">, in pass 3 (ePerl) via "<:=$NAME:>" and in pass 4 (GNU m4)
           via "m4_NAME".  A special variant --define=NAME=UNDEF does the opposite, it deletes
           previous definitions (which may be different than undefining these variables, e.g.
           with system defined variables).

       -D, --define=NAME~PATH
           Similar to the above but defines a variable holding a pathname which is autoadjusted
           (see below).  It can be interpolated in the same ways as the "NAME=STR" variant from
           above.

       -n, --noshebang
           This forces WML to ignore a possibly contained shebang line in inputfile.  This is
           usually used by WMk, because WMk already parsed this line and supplied the options to
           WML.

       -r, --norcfile
           This forces WML to ignore all .wmlrc files.

       -c, --nocd
           When WML processes an input file from another directory, it jumps into that directory
           before parsing .wmlrc files, and jump back to current directory after.  If this option
           is set, no directory change is made and .wmlrc files are read reative to current
           working directory.

       -O, --optimize=NUM
           This is the optimization option which is passed directly to pass 8 (htmlfix). It
           controls the amount of optimization/stripping which is applied to the generated HTML
           markup code.

       -o, --outputfile=SLICETERM:outputfile[@CHMODOPT]
           This redirects the output to a file. Usually the whole file will be send to stdout
           (same as "ALL:-"). You can use this option more than once to output to more than one
           file while using the SLICETERM as a set theory term of slices to determine which
           contents will be included into each particular output file.  The optional CHMODOPT is
           intended for specifying options for a finally applied chmod command. For instance use
           ``"u+x"'' to create a file with the execution bit set (Apache's XBitHack feature).
           See slice(1) for more details.

       -P, --prolog=PATH
           Runs an prolog filter over the input file.  This program receives the data to act on
           as STDIN and has to produce the filtered data on STDOUT.

       -E, --epilog=PATH
           Runs an epilogue program over the finally resulting output files.  Currently the
           following WML-specific programs are known: htmlinfo, linklint, tidy and weblint.  But
           you can specify any program which is available in your "PATH". This program receives
           the file to act on as its first command line argument. Notice that output is not
           redirected to this file, so you have to use a wrapper or program specific flags if you
           want to modify output files.

       -t, --settime
           This sets the modification time of all output files to the modification time of
           intputfile plus 1 second. This is useful because Webservers will generate
           "Last-Modified" headers and there the editing time is more important than the
           generation time. The 1 second offset is for the dependencies of Makefiles.

       -M, --depend[=OPTIONS]
           Output a rule suitable for `make' describing the dependencies of each output file, as
           `gcc' does. It has only sense when the -o option is used.  No processing is done
           except for the first pass.

           The D flag option writes the rule to a dependency file. The name of this file is
           obtained by replacing the suffix of the output file by ".d".

           The M flag option deletes the system files from the list of dependencies.

       -p, --pass=STR
           Specifies which of the passes described above are actually applied under runtime. The
           argument STR is a comma-separated list of pass numbers with one special case: You can
           write "X-Y" for all passes "X...Y".  When pass 9 is not part of STR the resulting
           output is written to STDOUT. Default is the string ``"1-9"''.

       -W, --passoption=NUM,STR
           Set option STR for the pass NUM.

       -s, --safe
           This disables some Perl hacks inside WML which speedup processing by reducing the
           forking overhead when running the various passes.

           Without this option WML pre-compiles the passes 1,5,6,7,8 (which are written in Perl!)
           into a different namespace of the currently running Perl interpreter instead of
           running them externally via "system()". The effect is that these programs are run from
           within the same Perl interpreter thus saving five CPU- and time-intensive "fork()"'s.
           The actual gain is between 2 and 4 seconds of processing time. Although experience
           showed that it works great, the theoretical problem still is, that this approach is
           somewhat risky due to internal Perl variable conflicts.

           Use this option to disable these speedups by forcing WML to use the safe "fork()"
           approach.

       -v, --verbose[=NUM]
           This sets verbose mode (from 1 to 9) where some processing information will be given
           on the console. Useful for debugging. This option also gets passed to some of the
           filtering programs. Default is no verbosity and just -v means -v1.

       -q, --quiet
           This sets quiet mode where the processing prop is no longer displayed.  Use this
           option when running wml as a batch job.  This option is automatically forced when
           inputfile is missing.  Then WML automatically reads from stdin in quiet mode.

       -V, --version[=NUM]
           Gives the version identification string and disclaimer (no NUM or NUM >= 1), the WML
           build information (NUM >= 2) and the Perl build information (NUM >= 3). Use this
           option to get a brief description of your installed WML system, especially when
           reporting bugs to the author.

       -h, --help
           Prints the usage summary page.

ENVIRONMENT

   DEFINED VARIABLES
       The following variables are always defined by wml under runtime and are usually
       interpolated via <"get-var NAME"> inside Pass 2 and via $NAME in Pass 3.

       WML_SRC_DIRNAME
           The current working directory from where wml was started.  An absolute Unix filesystem
           path.

       WML_SRC_FILENAME
           The name of the inputfile from the command line. Useful when running wml on a bulk of
           files and includefiles have to determine in which they are included.

       WML_SRC_BASENAME
           The basename of the inputfile, i.e. the "WML_SRC_FILENAME", but with the extension
           already stripped.

       WML_SRC_TIME
           The last modification time of inputfile in "time()" format.  Useful inside footers
           when customized date format is needed.

       WML_SRC_CTIME
           The last modification time of inputfile in "ctime()" format.  Useful inside footers
           include files.

       WML_SRC_ISOTIME
           The last modification time of inputfile in ISO "yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss" format.  Useful
           inside footers include files.

       WML_SRC_USERNAME
           The Unix username of the user who own inputfile.

       WML_SRC_REALNAME
           The realname of the user who own inputfile.

       WML_GEN_TIME
           The current time of generation in "time()" format.  Useful inside footers when
           customized date format is needed.

       WML_GEN_CTIME
           The current time of generation in "ctime()" format.  Useful inside footers include
           files.

       WML_GEN_ISOTIME
           The current time of generation in ISO "yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss" format.  Useful inside
           footers include files.

       WML_GEN_USERNAME
           The Unix username of the user who runs the wml process.

       WML_GEN_REALNAME
           The realname of the user who runs the wml process.

       WML_GEN_HOSTNAME
           The name of the host on which the wml command runs.

       WML_LOC_PREFIX
           The location prefix where WML was installed to at built time.

       WML_LOC_BINDIR
           The directory where WML's binaries were installed to at built time.

       WML_LOC_LIBDIR
           The directory where WML's library files were installed to at built time.

       WML_LOC_DATADIR
           The directory where WML's data files were installed to at built time.

       WML_LOC_MANDIR
           The directory where WML's manual pages were installed to at built time.

       WML_VERSION
           The version identification string of WML.  Use this for instance in HTML comments
           inside header includes to identify the generation tools version.

   USED VARIABLES
       "WMLOPTS"
           This variable can contain a string of options.  Usually this is used by Bourne-Shell
           users like

             $ WMLOPTS="-DNAME1=VALUE2 -DNAME2=VALUE2"
             $ export WMLOPTS

           and by C-Shell users like

             $ setenv WMLOPTS "-DNAME1=VALUE2 -DNAME2=VALUE2"

           to make sure some variables are defined for all runs of wml.

       "PAGER"
           This variable contains the pager WML is to use. WML uses a pager when called with the
           --verbose=NUM or -vNUM option respectively and NUM is 3 or higher and therefore
           showing the processed data after each pass.  Default is 'more'.

       "TMPDIR"
           This variable contains the directory WML stores its temporary files in.  Default is
           '/tmp'.

USER FILES

       $HOME/.wmlrc and (../)*.wmlrc
           These files can also contain option strings, one option per line.  Usually the
           contents is one or more -D options, especially auto-adjusted ones:

             -DROOTREL~.
             -DROOTABS=http://thishost/thisarea/
                :
             -DNAME1=VALUE1
             -DNAME2=VALUE2
                :

STANDARD INCLUDE FILES

       WML is shipped with a standard set of include files.  You can directly include them via

         #use wml::category::name

       and read their own documentation via

         $ man wml::category::name

       See wml::all(3) for a description of all available include files.

SPECIAL FEATURES

       The WML control frontend provides a few special features on its own:

       Shebang Line Support
           WML recognizes a shebang line (``"#!wml" options'') in the .wml files and
           automatically adds options to its command line. This line is also used by WMk. Two
           special features in contrast to shebang lines for the Unix loader are available: WML's
           shebang line can be continued via a backslash character and the constructs %DIR and
           %<BASE> are interpolated (where %DIR is the path to the directory the source while
           resides and %BASE is the filename of the source file without any extension).

           Example:

             #!wml -o (ALL-LANG_*)+LANG_EN:%BASE.en.html \
                   -o (ALL-LANG_*)+LANG_DE:%BASE.de.html

       Data Protection Container Tag
           WML provides an own internal container tag named "<protect
           [pass=SPEC]>"..."</protect>" which can be used to protect any type of data from being
           processed by any WML pass. When no "pass" attribute is given SPEC defaults to "1-9".
           When you use "pass" then SPEC can be either "#-", "-#", "#-#" or a comma separated
           list of passes, while "#" can be between 1 and 9.

           Example:

              <script language="JavaScript">
              <protect pass=2>
              ...
              output = "<PRE><DIV ALIGN=\"CENTER\"><B>" + help_string + "</B></DIV></PRE>"
              ...
              </protect>
              </script>

           Warning:

           Since WML 2.0.3, pass 1 includes extra stuff to help keeping information about line
           numbers relevant (a la cpp).  So when writing

              <protect pass=2>
              #include 'foo'
              </protect>

           these extra commands will not be interpreted during pass 2 and will remain on output.
           To suppress them, either compile with "-W1,-N" flag, or write

              <protect pass=2>
              #include 'foo' IPP_NOSYNCLINES
              </protect>

AUTHORS

        Ralf S. Engelschall
        rse@engelschall.com
        www.engelschall.com

        Denis Barbier
        barbier@engelschall.com

SEE ALSO

       wmd(1), wml_faq(7), wml_intro(7), wml_tutorial(7), wml_tags(7), wml::all(3).