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From: [email protected] (Andy Wardley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.modules
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Text::MetaText version 0.19 released.
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Date: 11 Apr 1998 00:57:12 GMT
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The latest version of Text::MetaText is trundling its way through CPAN
as I type.

MetaText is (yet another) text processor, ideally suited to web page
generation and other similar tasks  (they seem to be getting real
popular these days... I wonder if template processing in perl has
become a standard part of a college course somewhere? :-)

Included in the distribution, for those who are at a loss facing this
plethora of modules,  is a 'Features' file which lists the main features
of MetaText and compares and contrasts it to some of the other text
processing solutions out there (e.g. Text::Template, Parse::ePerl,
Text::Vpp).

Included below is the README file.


Enjoy.
A


#========================================================================
#
# Text::MetaText
#
#   Version 0.19
#
#   Copyright (C) 1996-1998 Andy Wardley <[email protected]>.
#   All Rights Reserved.
#
#------------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# README
#
#   This file is contains relevant extracts from the MetaText documentation
#   to provide an overview of MetaText and in particular, the installation
#   process.
#
#   For more information, see the full MetaText documentation and
#   support files:
#
#      Changes   Somewhat verbose list of per-version changes.
#      Todo      Known bugs and possible future enhancements.
#      Features  A summary of MetaText features and brief comparison to
#                other perl 'template' modules.
#
#========================================================================

#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# QUICK START
#------------------------------------------------------------------------

   CPAN: /modules/by-authors/Andy_Wardley/Text-MetaText-<ver>.tar.gz

   gunzip Text-MetaText-<ver>.tar.gz
   tar xvf Text-MetaText-<ver>.tar
   cd Text-MetaText-<ver>

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install

   #!/usr/bin/perl -w
   use Text::MetaText;

   my $mt = Text::MetaText->new();
   print $mt->process_file($myfile);
   print $mt->process_text($mytext);


#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# DOCUMENTATION EXTRACTS
#------------------------------------------------------------------------

NAME
   Text::MetaText - Perl extension implementing meta-language for
   processing "template" text files.

SYNOPSIS
       use Text::MetaText;

       my $mt = Text::MetaText->new();

       print $mt->process_file($filename, \%vardefs);

       print $mt->process_text($textstring, \%vardefs);

SUMMARY OF METATEXT DIRECTIVES
       %% DEFINE
          variable1 = value          # define variable(s)
          variable2 = "quoted value"
       %%

       %% SUBST variable  %%         # insert variable value
       %% variable %%                # short form of above

       %% BLOCK blockname %%         # define a block 'blockname'
          block text...
       %% ENDBLOCK %%

       %% INCLUDE blockname %%       # include 'blockname' block text
       %% INCLUDE filename  %%       # include external file 'filename'

       %% INCLUDE file_or_block      # a more complete example...
          variable = value           # additional variable definition(s)
          if       = condition       # conditional inclusion
          unless   = condition       # conditional exclusion
          format   = format_string   # printf-like format string with '%s'
          filter   = fltname(params) # post-process filter
       %%

       %% TIME                       # current system time, as per time(2)
          format   = format_string   # display format, as per strftime(3C)
       %%

DESCRIPTION
   MetaText is a text processing and markup meta-language which can
   be used for processing "template" files. This module is a Perl 5
   extension implementing a MetaText object class which processes
   text files, interpreting and acting on the embedded MetaText
   directives within.

   Like a glorified pre-processor, MetaText can; include files,
   define and substitute variable values, execute conditional
   actions based on variables, call other perl functions or object
   methods and capture the resulting output back into the document,
   and more. It can format the resulting output of any of these
   operations in a number of ways. The objects, and inherently, the
   format and symantics of the MetaText langauge itself, are highly
   configurable.

   MetaText was originally designed to aid in the creation of html
   documents in a large web site. It remains well suited for this
   and similar tasks, being able to create web pages (dynamically
   or statically) that are consistent with each other, yet easily
   customisable:

   *   standard headers, footers and other elements can be defined in
       separate files and then inserted into web documents:

           %% INCLUDE header %%

   *   variables can be defined externally or from within a document,
       then can be substituted back into the text. This is useful
       for including your %% name %% or %% email %% address or any
       other variable, and for encoding URL's or file paths that
       can then be changed en masse. e.g.

           <img src="%% imgroot %%/foo/bar.gif">

   *   conditional actions can be made based on variable definitions,
       allowing easily and instantly customisable web pages. e.g

           %% INCLUDE higraphics/header if="higfx && userid != abw" %%

   *   blocks of text can be internally defined simplifying the
       creation of repetitive elements. e.g.

           %% BLOCK table_row %%
           <tr> <td>%% userid %%</td> <td>%% name %%</td> </tr>
           %% ENDBLOCK %%

           %% INCLUDE table_row userid=lwall  name="Larry Wall"         %%
           %% INCLUDE table_row userid=tomc   name="Tom Christiansen"   %%
           %% INCLUDE table_row userid=merlyn name="Randal L. Schwartz" %%

   *   in addition, the metapage utility is a script which can
       automatically traverse document trees, processing updated
       files to assist in web document management and other similar
       tasks.

PREREQUISITES
   MetaText requires Perl 5.004 or later. The Date::Format module
   should also be installed. This is available from CPAN (in the
   "TimeDate" distribution) as described in the following section.
   The metapage utility also requires the File::Recurse module,
   distributed in the "File-Tools" bundle, also available from
   CPAN.

OBTAINING AND INSTALLING THE METATEXT MODULE
   The MetaText module is available from CPAN. As the 'perlmod' man
   page explains:

       CPAN stands for the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network.
       This is a globally replicated collection of all known Perl
       materials, including hundreds of unbunded modules.

       [...]

       For an up-to-date listing of CPAN sites, see
       http://www.perl.com/perl/ or ftp://ftp.perl.com/perl/ .

   Within the CPAN archive, MetaText is in the "Text::" group which
   forms part of the the category:

     *) String Processing, Language Text Processing,
        Parsing and Searching

   The module is available in the following directories:

       /modules/by-module/Text/Text-MetaText-<version>.tar.gz
       /authors/id/ABW/Text-MetaText-<version>.tar.gz

   For the latest information on MetaText or to download the latest
   pre-release/beta version of the module, consult the definitive
   reference, the MetaText Home Page:

       http://www.kfs.org/~abw/perl/metatext/

   MetaText is distributed as a single gzipped tar archive file:

       Text-MetaText-<version>.tar.gz

   Note that "<version>" represents the current MetaText Revision
   number, of the form "0.18". See the REVISION section below to
   determine the current version number for Text::MetaText.

   Unpack the archive to create a MetaText installation directory:

       gunzip Text-MetaText-<version>.tar.gz
       tar xvf Text-MetaText-<version>.tar

   'cd' into that directory, make, test and install the MetaText
   module:

       cd Text-MetaText-<version>
       perl Makefile.PL
       make
       make test
       make install

   The 't' sub-directory contains a number of small sample files
   which are processed by the test script (called by 'make test').
   See the README file in that directory for more information. A
   logfile (test.log) is generated to report any errors that occur
   during this process. Please note that the test suite is
   incomplete and very much in an 'alpha' state. Any further
   contributions here are welcome.

   The 'make install' will install the module on your system. You
   may need root access to perform this task. If you install the
   module in a local directory (for example, by executing "perl
   Makefile.PL LIB=~/lib" in the above - see `perldoc MakeMaker'
   for full details), you will need to ensure that the PERL5LIB
   environment variable is set to include the location, or add a
   line to your scripts explicitly naming the library location:

       use lib '/local/path/to/lib';

   The metapage utility is a script designed to automate MetaText
   processing of files. It can traverse directory trees, identify
   modified files (by comparing the time stamp of the equivalent
   file in both "source" and "destination" directories), process
   them and direct the resulting output to the appropriate file
   location in the destination tree. One can think of metapage as
   the MetaText equivalent of the Unix make(1S) utility.

   The installation process detailed above should install metapage
   in your system's perl 'installbin' directory (try
   "perl '-V:installbin'" to check this location). See the metapage
   documentation (`perldoc metapage') for more information on
   configuring and using metapage.

AUTHOR
   Andy Wardley <[email protected]>

   See also:

       http://www.kfs.org/~abw/

REVISION
   $Revision: 0.19 $

COPYRIGHT
   Copyright (c) 1996-1998 Andy Wardley. All Rights Reserved.

   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
   modify it under the terms of the Perl Artistic License.

SEE ALSO
   For more information, see the accompanying documentation and
   support files:

       README    Text based version of the module documentation.
       Changes   Somewhat verbose list of per-version changes.
       Todo      Known bugs and possible future enhancements.
       Features  A summary of MetaText features and brief comparison to
                 other perl 'template' modules.

   For information about the metapage utility, consult the specific
   documentation:

       perldoc metapage
     or
       man metapage

   For more information about the author and other Perl development work:

       http://www.kfs.org/~abw/
       http://www.kfs.org/~abw/perl/
       http://www.cre.canon.co.uk/perl/

   For more information about Perl in general:

       http://www.perl.com/


--
Andy Wardley <[email protected]> http://www.kfs.org/~abw
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