Re: Countries and some changes to the vendor page
On Tue, Mar 30, 1999 at 12:20:25AM +0400, Michael Sobolev wrote:
> I see. The only thing I'd like to point out is that in this case wml's syntax
> interfere with HTML which is the output format and which , if I am right, can
> be easily used in the .wml file. This does not make the source files clearer
> and easier to understand from one hand, and should add a really sophisticated
> processing into wml itself, from another.
>
Since wml outputs html, it is only proper that it knows and understands tags.
wml is powerful enough to let you overload html tags. This means you can shoot
yourself in the foot or do very useful things. For example, wml will look inside
of images, grab the dimensions and add a width= and height= to the <img> tag.
There are some constructs in wml that do some very powerful things (read up on
passes 3 and 5 in wml), and can make it difficult to read sources. All the
difficult parts can be put into template files though and this is exactly what is
done with the Debian web pages. That the web pages are available in 10 languages
is a testament to the power of wml(*). I would not attempt 1/4 of what is done
in the Debian web pages without wml.
I suggest you read up on wml before asking more questions.
Jay Treacy
(*) All the header and footer information is translated once. After that,
translators don't have to worry about translating anything but the body of the
pages. Even more, there is only one set of template files (yes, it includes all
the translations. See pass 9 of wml) so all translations are guaranteed to have
the same style and any changes are automaticaly seen by every page and
every language. Sure there are a few of us that need to know what is really
going on, but the other 20+ people making contributions don't.
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