webgen users - Dec 2007 - [new user] some features requests ...

Hi,
After many tries, i''ve decided to give up dynamic websites, which
definitely do not match my needs, and instead replace my blog by a
webgen site. I''ve however some unanswered questions.

1) RSS
One of the main interest of dynamic website is the ability to provide
user a view to last updated pages, thanks to RSS. Is there a way for
webgen to generate a RSS file from last modified files ? It seems
possible to me, since webgen tutorial already presents a plugin
mimicking this kind of feature, with the last updated tweak.

2) Custom HTML tags.
For my site, I''ve some custom HTML tags that I process before sending
to HTML verification; They are :
 - rot13 for rot13ing text
 - footnote for generating footnotes calls and content in an easy way
 - isbn for fetching from a remote server book infos from an isbn provider
and some others.
Notice I do not ask you to write these plugins, but instead would like
to know how to write them, since I''ve a little experience in
implementations of these tags (I''ve done it at least three times).

3) Import from blogging system
I was using Wordpress, and have a thousand of articles waiting for
import, Is there a way to imagine an easy port ?

4) Categories and tags
I''m talinkg here of folksonomies (delicious like) tags. Are they
implemented in webgen ?

5) External RSS inclusion
Suppose I want to incldue data from an external RSS (like my delicious
feed) in a static way. How could i do that ?

Well, that''s all for now ;-)

-- 
Nicolas Delsaux
N''imprimez ce mail que si vous ne savez pas le lire sur
l''?cran : les
?lectrons se recyclent bien, le papier, beaucoup moins bien.

On Mon, 24 Dec 2007 10:53:12 +0100
"Nicolas Delsaux" <nicolas.delsaux at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> After many tries, i''ve decided to give up dynamic websites, which
> definitely do not match my needs, and instead replace my blog by a
> webgen site. I''ve however some unanswered questions.
> 
> 1) RSS
> One of the main interest of dynamic website is the ability to provide
> user a view to last updated pages, thanks to RSS. Is there a way for
> webgen to generate a RSS file from last modified files ? It seems
> possible to me, since webgen tutorial already presents a plugin
> mimicking this kind of feature, with the last updated tweak.
The current development version has an RSS file handler plugin, the
latest stable version 0.4.6 does not.
 
> 2) Custom HTML tags.
> For my site, I''ve some custom HTML tags that I process before
sending
> to HTML verification; They are :
>  - rot13 for rot13ing text
>  - footnote for generating footnotes calls and content in an easy way
>  - isbn for fetching from a remote server book infos from an isbn
> provider and some others.
> Notice I do not ask you to write these plugins, but instead would like
> to know how to write them, since I''ve a little experience in
> implementations of these tags (I''ve done it at least three times).
rot13 and isbn could be easily done via a tag plugin, I imagine. For
the footnote it depends. The maruku markup already includes the ability
to generate footnotes, other markup processors don''t and you would need
to write a plugin for that. In the devel version of webgen this would
be a content processor plugin, in the stable version... hm... would
depend on what this plugin should do exactly.

Have a look at the available tag plugins in the webgen distribution to
see examples. Alas, the developer documentation is not quite as
complete as I would want it to be.
> 3) Import from blogging system
> I was using Wordpress, and have a thousand of articles waiting for
> import, Is there a way to imagine an easy port ?
I have never used wordpress so I don''t know how articles are stored
there. I could help with this if you provide information on how the
articles are stored and with which additional information (author,
title, ...)
> 4) Categories and tags
> I''m talinkg here of folksonomies (delicious like) tags. Are they
> implemented in webgen ?
No, tags are not implemented in webgen.
> 5) External RSS inclusion
> Suppose I want to incldue data from an external RSS (like my delicious
> feed) in a static way. How could i do that ?
You could write a tag plugin that fetches the RSS feed and displays,
say, the last 5 entries. Shouldn''t be too hard a problem to implement
this.
> Well, that''s all for now ;-)
Okay :) Hope I could shed a little light on your questions.

Maybe other users have gone a similar way and can also help you.
I think converting a wordpress blog into a webgen site is not
a small undertaking but I will help you where I can.

Regards,
  Thomas


-- 
|\  Thomas Leitner  --  thomas [underscore] leitner [at] gmx [dot] at
|>
|/  "Life is what happens to you while you''re busy making other
plans"

On 12/25/07, Thomas Leitner <t_leitner at gmx.at>
wrote:
>
> The current development version has an RSS file handler plugin, the
> latest stable version 0.4.6 does not.
Way cool. When is this RSS output expected to be usable
?
>
>
> rot13 and isbn could be easily done via a tag plugin, I imagine.
They will be so.
For some weird reasons, i would like to be able to write text like this :
---
This text embeds some <rot13>secret text</rot13>
---
Is it thinkable ?
> For
> the footnote it depends. The maruku markup already includes the ability
> to generate footnotes, other markup processors don''t and you would
need
> to write a plugin for that. In the devel version of webgen this would
> be a content processor plugin, in the stable version... hm... would
> depend on what this plugin should do exactly.
Well. For me, footnotes are to be written in the text, like rot13 was.
Furthermore, i want the plugin to mlove the footnote text at page
bottom, and to generate link between footnote anchor and content. Hard
to do ?
>
> Have a look at the available tag plugins in the webgen distribution to
> see examples. Alas, the developer documentation is not quite as
> complete as I would want it to be.
So do I ;-)
>
> I have never used wordpress so I don''t know how articles are
stored
> there. I could help with this if you provide information on how the
> articles are stored and with which additional information (author,
> title, ...)
Well ...
I''ve fighted and fighted, and after 4 hours, i finally succeed into
importing 740 legacy entries, associated with their categories, which
lead me to my next question.
>
> No, tags are not implemented in webgen.
OK, no tags, but meta description, which is way cool.
However, for my categories, i''ve a tough problem.
See, in Wordpress, you can define a category tree. Mine looks like this

general
 - SF
 - Computers
   - Languages
     - Java
     - Ruby
 - Web
   - del.icio.us

I would like this category tree to be reproduced in webgen. how can i do that ?
Through folders organization ?
Furthermore, for each category, I would like the menu to contain all
elements of the category. How can I achieve that ?
I''ve investigated desperatly your doc, but was lost by the magic meta
menu.
>
> You could write a tag plugin that fetches the RSS feed and displays,
> say, the last 5 entries. Shouldn''t be too hard a problem to
implement
> this.
OK ... Well, 5 last entries are a little too few, but I can increase
it, obviously.
>
> Okay :) Hope I could shed a little light on your questions.
A little :-)
>
> Maybe other users have gone a similar way and can also help you.
here is why I use the webgen users list ;-)
> I think converting a wordpress blog into a webgen site is not
> a small undertaking but I will help you where I can.
No, it''s definitly not. But we''re men for great challenges, no
?

-- 
Nicolas Delsaux
N''imprimez ce mail que si vous ne savez pas le lire sur
l''?cran : les
?lectrons se recyclent bien, le papier, beaucoup moins bien.

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:18:54 +0100
"Nicolas Delsaux" <nicolas.delsaux at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/25/07, Thomas Leitner <t_leitner at gmx.at> wrote:
> >
> > The current development version has an RSS file handler plugin, the
> > latest stable version 0.4.6 does not.
> 
> Way cool. When is this RSS output expected to be usable ?
It is already useable, I think :) As I said, it works fine in the devel
version. And planned release date for the devel version is 31.12.07...
I have to add some stuff, though, so the real release date maybe a bit
further away. However, since the repository is in a consistent state
you could check out the devel version from the repository (found under
branches/head) and work with it.

What is still missing from the devel version:
* gallery file handler
* sipttra file handler
* some minor tag plugins
* inclusion of resources in pages (implemented this one yesterday)
* the so-often-said-never-had-time-to-implement blog handler :)
* some other minor plugins

> > rot13 and isbn could be easily done via a tag plugin, I imagine.
> 
> They will be so.
> For some weird reasons, i would like to be able to write text like
> this : ---
> This text embeds some <rot13>secret text</rot13>
> ---
> Is it thinkable ?
This is definitely going to work... with a slight change but also only
in the devel version:

  This text embeds some {rot13::}secret text{rot13}

The current stable version 0.4.6 does not have this feature. So you
would need to do this with ERB.
> > For
> > the footnote it depends. The maruku markup already includes the
> > ability to generate footnotes, other markup processors don''t
and
> > you would need to write a plugin for that. In the devel version of
> > webgen this would be a content processor plugin, in the stable
> > version... hm... would depend on what this plugin should do exactly.
> 
> Well. For me, footnotes are to be written in the text, like rot13 was.
> Furthermore, i want the plugin to mlove the footnote text at page
> bottom, and to generate link between footnote anchor and content. Hard
> to do ?
As I said, footnotes can be automatically created by using the Maruku
markup language (http://maruku.rubyforge.org/maruku.html). If you want
to this ''by hand'':
* devel version: I would write a content processor for this which
searches for <footnote> tags with Hpricot and then does all the magic.
This should not be too hard to implement, especially when using Hpricot.
* 0.4.6 version: harder to do since the processing pipeline for a page
file cannot be customized. would go with maruku here.
> > No, tags are not implemented in webgen.
> 
> OK, no tags, but meta description, which is way cool.
> However, for my categories, i''ve a tough problem.
> See, in Wordpress, you can define a category tree. Mine looks like
> this
> 
> general
>  - SF
>  - Computers
>    - Languages
>      - Java
>      - Ruby
>  - Web
>    - del.icio.us
> 
> I would like this category tree to be reproduced in webgen. how can i
> do that ? Through folders organization ?
> Furthermore, for each category, I would like the menu to contain all
> elements of the category. How can I achieve that ?
> I''ve investigated desperatly your doc, but was lost by the magic
meta
> menu.
Yeah, would do that with folders. This would work fine if one article
can only belong into one category. If an article belongs to many
categories, you would need to use the metainfo.yaml file to insert
links into the menus manually (also see
http://webgen.rubyforge.org/documentation/plugins/core/filehandler.html#metainfo-file)

I imagine it would also be possible to automatically generate an
in-memory folder structure from the meta information of the articles
which can then be used like a normal folder structure.

The menu itself should pose no problem, just use MenuStyle/Vertical
which should do the trick. 
> > I think converting a wordpress blog into a webgen site is not
> > a small undertaking but I will help you where I can.
> 
> No, it''s definitly not. But we''re men for great
challenges, no ?
 
Yes, we are :)

As I have proposed above you could use the devel version. It is always
in a consistent state and passes all written tests. So it should be
fairly save for common consumption:

  svn co svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/webgen/branches/head webgen
  cd webgen
  ruby -Ilib -rubygems bin/webgen help

The gallery and blog file handlers are next on my list and should be in
the repo in the following days.

-- 
|\  Thomas Leitner  --  thomas [underscore] leitner [at] gmx [dot] at
|>
|/  "Life is what happens to you while you''re busy making other
plans"