Jordan K. Hubbard
1997-Jan-21 06:44 UTC
Announcing Heitml for FreeBSD (and other operating systems)...
[Posting this on behalf of Michael Elbel <me@FreeBSD.org> - jkh] Note: I'm connected to the H.E.I people in that DITEC paid them money to support their product under FreeBSD, so I'm biased. But I still think it's the nicest thing since sliced bread if it comes to extending HTML and connect Databases to the web. I've used it for some pretty complex applications and it didn't take me 10% of the time I would have to have spent if I'd done it in, like, perl. It's also IMO nicer than w3-msql and PHP/FI in that its syntax is database independent (not regarding potential differences in the actual SQL implementations). Michael Michael Elbel, DITEC Internet Services, Muenchen, Germany - me@muc.ditec.de Fermentation fault (coors dumped) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: SHAREWARE: heitml 1.0, extended server side HTML (CGI & apache API) H.E.I. releases heitml (extended interactive HTML) version 1.0. heitml (pronounced "Hi"-TML) is a server side extension of HTML. It is designed to develop interactive Web Pages, Web Database Applications, and complex Web Sites in a structured, modular, and intelligent manner. heitml adds full-featured programming capabilities to HTML (e.g. <if>, <while>, and <let> Tags), plus powerful expression evaluation with integer, real, boolean, string, and tuple data types. It is possible to define your own Tags or Environment Tags and, by using include files, you can build your own libraries of re-usable components. heitml makes it possible to - develop Web Sites in a structured and modular way, drastically reducing maintenance overhead. - develop intelligent and interactive Web Sites, whose content dynamically adapts itself to user needs. - show the content of SQL databases with no programming other than to use our library of prefined "dba" Tags. - develop complete and complex database applications heitml runs on FreeBSD or Linux with any Web Server using the CGI interface, but is especially fast (avoiding the CGI overhead) within the apache Web Server using the apache API. Currently MSQL, Postgres 95, and the yard databases are supported. heitml also works on SunOS as well as Windows NT with CGI and ISAPI and ODBC. heitml is free for research, non-commercial and private usage, but Commercial Web Sites must pay a licensing fee. The fully operational version of heitml can be downloaded freely, and each Web Page you develop will display a message identifying it as the version for non-commercial use. After registration, you will receive a key to switch off the message without having to reinstall the program. heitml is suited for newcomers and professional programmers alike. Newcomers can use heitml just like HTML with additional powerful Tags. heitml pages are put on the web server, just like HTML pages, but with another file extension. Once heitml is installed, this is all what has to be done to use heitml. Libraries provided with heitml contain Tags suitable for many application tasks like Web Page Counters etc. Of special interest is the dba library which helps you to build complete database applications that browse and update tables. (Insert, update and delete records with no programming effort on your part.) Data fields can be validated and checked for consistency before entry or update, and a special password field can be assigned to each record to guard against unauthorized changes. An application created with the dba Library merely requires you to - define how you want the data to appear in browse mode (Table View) - define how you want the data to appear in list mode (Form View) See our guestbook application: http://www.h-e-i.de/heitml/kguest.hei?first=t Professional programmers can use heitml also as a full featured programming language: A heitml page is actually a program, which is executed. The execution of "<if cond>...<else>...</if>", "<while cond> ...</while>", and "<let x=expression>" etc. have the usual meaning as found in a programming language. The execution of User Defined Tags correspond to traditional procedure calls. heitml offers positional and keyword parameters with default values, input and output parameters, global and local variables and recursion. Also Environment Tags such as "<box> environment body </box>" can be defined and get the environment body as a functional parameter. heitml offers a dynamic tuple datatype, which works like a struct in C but fields can be added and processed dynamically. Tuple assignments follow reference semantics. heitml offers an alternate programming syntax, which allows to write several tags into < > signs seperated by semicolons, e.g. <let s="*"; while len(s)<130; ? s; br; s=s+s; /while> Within the configuration files of apache one can control which resources heitml-pages can access. This feature is important when hosting heitml-pages prepared by somebody else. For more info and downloads see http://www.h-e-i.de/heitml Helmut Emmelmann -- Helmut Emmelmann H.E.I. Helmut Emmelmann Informationssyteme GmbH Wimpfenerstrasse 23 Tel. 49-621-795141 68259 Mannheim Germany Fax. 49-621-795161 emmel@h-e-i.de http://www.h-e-i.de