From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Ian Broster <spam@broster.co.uk>
To: 9fans <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] httpd scripting
Message-Id: <20030602163818.316ebbf5.spam@broster.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <3EDB4C63.5080902@proweb.co.uk>
References: <bb72d569f23690de64aa9714d0016263@caldo.demon.co.uk>
	<3EDB4C63.5080902@proweb.co.uk>
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Date: Mon,  2 Jun 2003 16:38:18 +0100
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> the "code fragments in the HTML" model is not very scalable
>
> in fact, content management becomes a total nightmare

I've come to the conclusion that neither 'code in HTML' nor 'HTML
in code' are very good! Neither are easy to read, quotes mess
everything up and it's hard to debug.

My thought is to try to raise the abstraction higher.
Here's how I'd like to code a server generated page.

int some_data[5][5]; /*eg*/
create_my data(some_data);
...
{
 new_web_page(template);
 add(some_data, how_to_add_intgers);
 add(sometext, how_to_add_text);
 ...
 done(); /* composes the page and writes it out*/
}


Note that the ordering is not 'linear'. It doesn't matter which
order the add() calls come. the 'how_to_add_text' things
(whatever they are?) describe how the thing is presented in
the markup language.

Perhaps this has overtones of a Tk-like interface.
Perhaps it's more object oriented. One
day, I'd like to try to find the time to investigate.
Maybe something already exists?

ian