Hi Parv,
On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, parv wrote:
> Parv, from fvwm list, here. Please let me know how can i
> help you. What have you have so far, and what needs to be
> done?
It was suggested making a web page in the look of fvwm.
Dominik sayed it would be nice if we could use the a
"FvwmPager"-style navigation and if the web page would be
available in different fvwm-designs used from fvwm-theme. I
like both ideas a lot. The pager navigation might not be
that easy but possible ;-)
Do you know php? It's a simple programming language which
can be embedded in html-code. It makes web design very
powerful since html-code can be generated at request time.
It makes it possible to separate the contents (e.g. text
and pictures) form a web site from its layout. The links to
other pages can be generated as well which allows different
types of navigation structures.
I developed a simple concept which can be used to describe
web page contents and layout (almost) totally separated.
I will describe its workings briefly:
Each (php)page consists two parts. One contains
informations about the page which may be useful to other
pages refering to this page (e.g. title name, link name,
link picture, file name, ...) and its relation to other
pages (parent site, child site). Here is an example usable
for fvwm:
$title = "Fvwm Homepage";
$link_name = "Home";
$link_picture = "";
$parent_site = "top";
$child_sites = array("download","news","faq");
$requested_file = basename($PHP_SELF);
$this_site = fvwm_home
if( strlen("$navigation_check") > 0 ) return;
if( strlen("$site_has_been_loaded") == 0 ) {
$site_has_been_loaded = "true";
include(sec_filename("$layout_file"));
exit();
}
This "Header" is common to all pages belonging to a web
site. Below this header the contents of this page follow
which can be html or/and php.
After all pages are described in this way. A php-script
called navgen.php is executed. It collects all
header-information from all php-files it founds and
performs simple checks to ensure consistence of the
navigation structure. This scripts generates a file which
contains array assignments like:
$top_array = array("download", "news", "faq" );
$fvwm_home["file"] =
"/afs/tu-chemnitz.de/home/urz/u/uwp/public_html/fvwm_home.php";
$fvwm_home["url"] = "/~uwp/fvwm_home.php";
$fvwm_home["link_name"] = "Home";
$fvwm_home["link_chapter"] = "";
$fvwm_home["link_pic"] = "";
$fvwm_home["parent_site"] = "top";
$fvwm_home["child_sites"] = array("download", "news", "faq");
...
Note: Not all information in the header need to be exported
to the arrays and not all information exported need to be
defined in every header. The script needs to be ran only
once when something on the navigation structure was changed
e.g. web page was added, removed or renamed. When the script
reads the header information a variable "$navigation_check"
is set which causes to exit the the php-web-page at the
following line:
if( strlen("$navigation_check") > 0 ) return;
A the time of a page request (the page is displayed by
web-browser) this variable is not set so the page is
processed further where it includes a layout file. This
layout file defines a set of layout functions and uses them
to display the contents of the page. The layout file uses
the arrays generated by navgen.php to generate the
navigation part of the web page. From the layout file the
page is include again to get its real contents.
I have written a couple of php-functions which convert
the array-structure to a html-navigation. This functions
may be (re)used for the fvwm project.
I know this sounds a little bit confusing. I packed to
php-files of my web-page in a single archiv so that you can
download it:
http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~uwp/download/navgen.tar.gz
Okay so far, what can we do next? I have downloaded all
html-files form fvwm.org and packed them in a tar archive:
http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~uwp/download/fvwm_14032003.tar.gz
This html-files can be used to write/generate the
php-files. All we need to do is add the header to this
pages and adapt them according to the fvwm site structure.
We may need to add some header information to get the
"navigation pager" work. But this can be done later. After
this we can run navgen.php and use one of the existing
layout files to display the pages.
After this we need to create a new layout file in fvwm
style and maybe redesign some of the existing fvwm pages.
For the fvwm-project I would like to put more php-functions
in the layout file which maybe used in the web page files
to insert some layout properties.
We need probably a CVS repository to keep our files
consistent. I will ask fvwm-workers for this.
Please let me know what do you think.
Uwe
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