Provided by: wml_2.0.12ds1-7_amd64 bug

NAME

       WML Introduction - An introduction to WML's basic concepts

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 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.

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

   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 wml frontend.

       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)

           Description:

           This first pass reads 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 -I). When
           "name=value" pairs are appended to the include directive "$(name)" is expanded to
           "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.  ``"__FILE__"'' and ``"__LINE__"'' expand to the current include file and
           line number while ``"__END__"'' terminates the reading of the current include file.

           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__

           Example:

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

             __END__
             Documentation of FooBar...

       Pass 2: High-Level Macro Construct Expansion
            Processing:     explicit
            Implementation: Macro Processor for HTML Documents (mp4h)
            Author:         Denis Barbier <barbier@engelschall.com>
            See Also:       mp4h(1)
                            http://www.engelschall.com/sw/mp4h/

           Description:

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

           Summary Of Essential Features:

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

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

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

           Example:

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

       Pass 3: Programming Construct Expansion
            Processing:     explicit
            Implementation: Embedded Perl 5 Language (ePerl)
            Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
            See Also:       eperl(1)
                            http://www.engelschall.com/sw/eperl/

           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 ("<:") and end (":>") 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 ("<:= ...:>") for the
           construct ("<: print ...:>" which is used most of the time.  And there is a container
           tag in wml::std::tags which provides the more high-level container tag "<perl>".

           Summary Of Essential Features:

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

           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()) :>.

       Pass 4: Low-Level Macro Construct Expansion
            Processing:     explicit
            Implementation: GNU m4
            Author:         Ren'e Seindal (FSF)
            See Also:       m4(1)
                            http://www.gnu.mit.edu/

           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 ("m4_define()". There is a
           definition in wml::std::tags which provides a more high-level usage via the "<symbol>"
           tag.

           Notice: This pass is run under a special environment: First, all m4 builtin macros
           have to be prefixed with ""m4_"". Second, all variables which are defined by WML (both
           internal ones and the ones from the -D option) are directly accessible via symbols
           prefixed with "m4_", i.e. variable "NAME" is interpolated when "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 "m4""_quotes" and disable them later via "m4""_noquotes".

           Summary Of Essential Features:

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

             <symbol name value>

           Example:

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

             foo bar quux

       Pass 5: Diversion Filter
            Processing:     explicit
            Implementation: Divert
            Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
            See Also:       wml_p5_divert(3)

           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
           "divert" mechanism of GNU m4.  The idea is to define locations (via "{#NAME#}") at any
           point and fill such locations later by diverting the data flow to it (via "{#NAME#:"
           and ":#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 wml::std::tags
           for this functionality.

           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>

           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>

       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)

           Description:

           In this pass single characters or substrings are substituted within dedicated areas
           (delimited by "{: ... :}").  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 "s/../../" and "tr/../../" commands to specify the substitutions. These can be
           placed anywhere inside the substitution area and just have to be marked by "[[...]]"
           delimiters. But the commands are always applied to the whole area.

           Summary Of Essential Features:

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

           Example:

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

       Pass 7: Markup Code Fixup
            Processing:     implicit
            Implementation: HTMLfix
            Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
            See Also:       wml_p7_htmlfix(3)

           Description:

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

       Pass 8: Markup Code Stripping
            Processing:     implicit
            Implementation: HTMLstrip
            Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
            See Also:       wml_p8_htmlfix(3)

           Description:

           Because macro definitions add newlines to the output (or you have to always use
           ""..."<"/define-tag">";;;"", 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 -O. Default is -O2 which does a really good job without
           destroying anything. There is one special feature one should know: This pass
           recognizes pre-formatted areas ( "<pre>..</pre>") 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 "<nostrip>...</nostrip>". This has the same
           effect like "<pre>" but is itself stripped, too.

       Pass 9: Markup Code Splitting and Output Generation
            Processing:     implicit/explicit
            Implementation: Slice
            Author:         Ralf S. Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com>
            See Also:       slice(1)
                            http://www.engelschall.com/sw/slice/

           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 ("[NAME:...:NAME]") is
           recognized which defines so-called slices.  Those slices are (possibly overlapped or
           nested) named areas of the input file which can be used via WML's -o option. This
           option can contain a 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.

           Summary Of Essential Features:

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

           Example:

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

   CONCEPT 2: WMLRC FILE HIERARCHY AND WMLOPTS VARIABLE
       The second essential idea of WML is the use of .wmlrc files and a "WMLOPTS" environment
       variable for additionally command line options.  On startup the frontend wml first
       processes all options found in "WMLOPTS", then it reads all options from $HOME/.wmlrc
       followed by the options of all .wmlrc files found in all parent directories (i.e.
       ../.wmlrc, ../../.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 -D options in the .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 wml was started. Use this to easily
       introduce path or URL variables which adjust automatically to the current context of the
       generated webpage.

   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 wml provides a -D option for
       defining variables which get interpolated in each pass:

         -DNAME=VALUE
         -DNAME~VALUE

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

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

       "-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 -D option
           (either where you run the frontend wml or a .wmlrc file). Else the result is VALUE
           relative path-adjusted for the current working directory.

       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 "-DROOT~." in
       your top-level .wmlrc file then the variable "ROOT" will be interpolated to `"."' at the
       top-level, to `".."'  at the first subdir level, to `"../.."' at the second subdir level,
       etc.  Use this for creating navigation bars or URL references across subtrees.

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).

SEE ALSO

       wml_tutorial(7), wml_tags(7).

       wml_p1_ipp(3), mp4h(1), eperl(1), m4(1), wml_p5_divert(3), wml_p6_asubst(3),
       wml_p7_htmlfix(3), wml_p8_htmlstrip(3), slice(1).

       wml::all(3)