Subject: ANNOUNCE: Text::MetaText v0.15
From: [email-masked] (Andy Wardley)
Date: 20 Feb 1998 12:56:37 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.modules

Announcing the release of Text::MetaText.  Available now from CPAN.

   Text::
   ::MetaText     bdp0  Text processing/markup meta-language       

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

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.

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 "0.14". See the REVISION manpage 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.

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