>>>> "John" == John S Jacobs Anderson
<jacobs(a)genehack.org> writes:
John> on 7/27/00 8:41 AM, Adrian Aichner at aichner(a)ecf.teradyne.com wrote:
John> (mailing from work, hence no from: jacobs(a)xemacs.org. please just reply to
John> the list(s))
> I certainly did not mean to offend anybody.
John> I wasn't offended -- crotchety, maybe. Chalk it up to an
John> early morning reply, eh?
I learned a new word today: crotchety
Can't say I fully understand its meaning. Is it similar to "cranky"?
> Do you know whether PHP would provide us with comparable
> functionality?
John> I haven't played much with PHP, so take this with a grain of
John> salt. I see PHP as being more for sites with dynamic
John> content. Since the content at
xemacs.org is static, PHP
John> would be a bit of overkill. That's one of the things I like
John> about genpage -- it lets you do some tricks (via Perl) while
John> you're generating the pages, but doesn't introduce a lot of
John> overhead on the server.
John> What leads you to suggest PHP?
I played with Apache on my Windows NT laptop and came across PHP.
I'll learn about it first before I contemplate it further.
> I hope you will remain active will xemacs website development
and
> maintenance.
John> [ more stuff snipped ]
John> Hey, I'm not going anywhere. 8^) You've been doing a bang-up
John> job, from what I can see, and I hope you keep on with
John> it. Some documentation would be good, but it might be better
Thanks.
John> to let the dust settle a bit first -- make sure everything
John> is optimal, then nail it down with a doc or two.
John> And now on to the specifics...
APA> AFAIK, "base href" is a feature to be used when web documents are
APA> sent off via e-mail, to provide a base for all relative links.
John> [snip me asking for a cite]
John> But that doesn't say not to use it, just that it trumps
John> everything else. Which is exactly why I used it.
Yes, I realize this reference doesn't really support my position.
> Including a base href via the template.html into documents on
various
> directory hierarchy levels changes the meaning of relative links.
>
> All relative links become relative to that one location, which defeats
> modular, self-contained linking within a sub-directory.
John> When I started working on the site, there really wasn't that
John> much self-linking within sub-directories. (I want to say
John> none, but I'm not sure if that's right.)
You have done a great job.
I like html2content.pl too. Is that yours?
Converting "Architecting XEmacs" was a snap with it.
> I've been there, done that, and learned my lessons from that.
John> I see this as something that needs to be kept in mind while
John> working on pages, which is not a big problem for me.
John> This is sounding like a style issue. I'm perfectly happy to
John> run with whatever solution you think is right -- you're the
John> one slogging through the muck here.
jsja> The reason for using <BASE> is so image links in the
jsja> template will work at all relative directory levels of the
jsja> site. Consider what would happen with the <IMG
jsja> SRC="Images/xemacs.gif"> when viewing
jsja> <
URL:http://www.xemacs.org/About/index.html> if that BASE
jsja> tag wasn't there.
>
> I would use absoulte links like
> <IMG SRC="/Images/xemacs.gif">
> to access global features like images, and other shared resources.
John> Yes, that would work now.
John> The other reason I used <BASE> was because I was re-working
John> the site from a local copy -- so <IMG SRC="/Images/FOO">
All of these are in the repository now so this should all work.
John> wouldn't have allowed me to see what I was going. More than
John> anything, the <BASE> usage is a remnant of that work.
John> So, I guess aside from noting the potential break-age if
John> anybody mirrors the site in a remote directory (e.g. at
John> <
URL:http://www.foo.com/xemacs-mirror/>) using absolute
John> links will work.
Good point. I'll have to think about this for a bit.
John> Again, I'm sorry if my previous message sounded as if I was
John> upset, that was not what I intended to convey.
Peace.
John> Keep up the good work,
John> john.
--
Adrian Aichner <adrian(a)xemacs.org>