Website META Language (WML), About

Description Classification

Abstract

WML - Website META Language

Description

WML is a free HTML generation toolkit for Unix, internally consisting of 9 independent languages. The main idea of WML is a sequential filtering scheme where each language provides one of 9 processing passes. So WML reads an input file, applies passes 1-9 (or optionally only the passes specified) and finally produces one or more output files.
For maximum power WML ships with an already written set of include files which define additional higher-level functionality. The same way you can write your own custom HTML tagsets for WML to extend its functionality for your particular needs. So, whatever HTML tag you want (and WML not already provides), you just can program it yourself in Perl. WML is not a closed toolbox, its only the core upon which you can base your HTML generation environment.

Intend

It operates as a powerful offline HTML generation toolkit for webmasters. While not trivial and idiot proof it provides most of the features real hackers always wanted for HTML generation.

Highlight

The trick of WML are its 9 languages which are evaluated in sequence. These are:

Pass 1: Source Reading and Include File Expansion (ipp)
Pass 2: HTML Macro Construct Expansion (mp4h)
Pass 3: Perl 5 Programming Construct Expansion (eperl)
Pass 4: M4 Macro Construct Expansion (gm4)
Pass 5: Diversion Filter (divert)
Pass 6: Character and String Substitution (asubst)
Pass 7: HTML Fixup (htmlfix)
Pass 8: Line Stripping and Output Fixup (htmlstrip)
Pass 9: Output Splitting and Final Writing (slice)

This program is for you when...

...you are a real Webdesigner.
...you really create Webareas and not just single Webpages.
...your primary HTML creation platform is Unix.
...you love the idea of HTML generation.
...you hate the HTML code of WYSIWYG editors.
...you want to use favorite programming features.

This program is NOT for you when...

...you are just a WWW user.
...you only create a few web pages in your lifetime.
...your primary HTML creation platform is Windows or Macintosh.
...you don't know about and hate generation tools.
...you don't have any problems with WYSIWYG editors.
...you hate programming languages.

Primary Author

Ralf S. Engelschall
rse@engelschall.com
www.engelschall.com

Current Maintainer

Denis Barbier
barbier@engelschall.com

About the Logo

The logo symbolically shows the toothed wheels of WML's passes through which the markup code runs. Another important thing is the big "META" because WML just is a wrapper around existing languages.