Forresters, I am writing to *dev* instead of *user* because I have upgraded from Forrest v0.8 to v0.9-dev.
First of all, I know I should probably be using the Dispatcher instead of continuing to kludge my hacked fork of the pelt skin. However, my employer wants some “quick” updates to our Web sites before I continue trying to migrate to the Dispatcher. I quoted “quick” because implementing the requested changes is not as simple as those who do not have to implement the changes think it is: I have spent almost 1 month so far because I keep getting sidetracked by technical and implementation problems and details. Anyway, time to get to the point: I maintain 3 Web sites with Forrest v0.9-dev (I used SVN to check out Forrest less than 1 month ago): *techsol.ca*, *medallionsystem.com*, and * zpointproducts.com*. I need to copy the presentational/stylistic changes I made to *techsol.ca* to *medallionsystem.com*. This resulted in common CSS rules in the *extra-css* section of both site’s *skinconf.xml* files. I cannot have this duplication because it is inevitable that I will forget to copy a change to one site to the others. This mistake has actually already happened. I run forrest.sh build to build the static site. *forrest.sh* is my bash wrapper script. The *build* function runs my pre-build function, runs forrest to build the static site, then runs my post-build function to hack generated content in the static site build. My post-build function prepends an *...@import* rule to build/site/skin/profile.css. I have to prepend instead of append because *...@import* rules must come before all other rules in a stylesheet. The *...@import* rule imports my common stylesheet, extra-css_common.css. All 3 Web sites are kept in an SVN repository on * Repository*, my employer’s Debian Linux file server. I use a Ubuntu PC named *cannon*. On *cannon*, I check out working copies of the Web sites in ~/WEB/. The *medallionsystem.com* site was created first, then the * zpointproducts.com* and *techsol.ca* sites were forked from * medallionsystem.com*. Consequently, I ended up with some files that are common to all sites but were stored in the *medallionsystem.com* site. This is one of the reasons I got sidetracked many times: I moved these common files from WEB/medallionsystem.com/ to WEB/common/. I also needed to create new directories for the trunk and branches, because I experienced a situation where having only a trunk was not sufficient: I finally needed to create a branch for my work-in-progress. Anyway, extra-css_common.css lives in WEB/common/. src/documentation/skins/pelt-brolin/css/extra-css_common.css is a symlink to WEB/common/trunk/extra-css_common.css. This means extra-css_common.css is copied to build/site/skin/ when I build the static site, but not when I use forrest run. Yes, believe it or not, I have finally gotten to the point! ;) How can I make the the Forrest Web server use extra-css_common.css? Is this even possible, or is this Yet Another reason why I need to migrate to the Dispatcher instead of continuing to kludge my hacked fork of the pelt skin? Thanks, Brolin PS: I no longer have to use my user DTD (*document-v20-xi*) for XInclude support because Forrest v0.9-dev has XInclude support! :) PPS: I know the name extra-css_common.css is now inaccurate because it is no longer part of the *extra-css* section. I originally meant to include it in the *extra-css* section, but then I learned that *...@import* rules must come before all other rules in a stylesheet. It could be worse, though: for example, the last time I checked, the Linux kernel module for USB Palm OS devices was still named *visor* even though it now supports many other devices than Visors, including PalmOne/Palm devices. (The Handspring Visor was the first USB Palm OS device.) Well, on the subject of historical Palm OS names, the last time I checked, the entry point for a Palm OS application was still called *PilotMain* even though the Pilot name was dropped after the second-generation Palm PDAs. Anyway, I am sure you get the point. ;) -- Sometimes I forget how to do small talk: <http://xkcd.com/222/> “What if there were no hypothetical questions?” — George Carlin
