Re: New KDE web site.

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Elliot Lee <sopwith redhat com> writes:

> On 4 Nov 2000, Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> > I tend to agree with Joakim here that ditching WML would be a good
> > idea - WML is a pretty amazingly cludgy tower of M4, Perl, its own
> > variable substitution and 2 or 3 other things (!).
> 
> It does the job nicely from the perspective of the web developer, and
> happens to be implemented using a cludgy tower. The latter is less
> relevant than the former for the purposes of this discussion, since the
> cludgy tower just happens to work.

Just happens to work, maybe, until you try to change something and
need to understand what is going on.

   Pass 1: Source Reading and Include File Expansion
    Include files, OK

   Pass 2: High-Level Macro Construct Expansion
    Some hacked up custom macro language with weird, ugly syntax
  
   Pass 3: Programming Construct Expansion
    Perl

   Pass 4: Low-Level Macro Construct Expansion
    M4

   Pass 5: Diversion Filter
    In case you aren't confused enough by diversions in M4, here
    you get a chance to do it again here.

   Pass 6: Character and String Substitution
    In case you didn't have enough of an opportunity to confuse
    people with regexes in the Perl pass you can use more here.

   Pass 7: Markup Code Fixup
   Pass 8: Markup Code Stripping
    Fairly sane - a bit like html-tidy

   Pass 9: Markup Code Splitting and Output Generation
    Yet more opportunities for conditionalization.

That's 9 passes. Count them 9 passes. Including Perl and M4, languages
that by themselves tend to confuse people.

> > And since we're using a mix of WML and PHP, we'eve lost the main
> > advantages of WML - static content and the ability to test without a
> > web server.
> 
> This is because Joakim decided that he wanted to use PHP as much as
> possible, not because things are not reasonably implementable in WML.

Well, WML is all static content, and the places where PHP is being
used now is dynamic content, so using WML would have meant even
random crazy scripts running on the server, instead of stuff integrated
into CVS, and made it even harder for people to set up a dummy
installation. 

There is very good evidence that WML isn't working - the website
is not being maintained.

PHP has some disadvantages for this purpose - it is really meant to be
a scripting language for dynamic content, not a markup/macro language;
but I think a little clumsiness is better than a LOT of complexity.

We have evidence that WML isn't working for us - the site is
getting no maintainence.

Regards,
                                        Owen