Re: approval from sun and a last XML request [was Re: [gnome-love] wanted: php or cgi programmer with some spare time to help with gnome test spec]

[fflewddur <fflewddur dropline net>]

latest vesion is up and is fully dynamic.  it supports adding new
modules in the form of directories full of html test files, or simply
adding in a new test file to an existing module.  the only rule here is
that all test files must end in '.html'.  if this looks good, i'll go
through and remove all the obsolete code/files, then post a tarball with
the sources.

> > well, i tracked down three perl scripts that are *supposed* to generate
> > the instructions, and while they do run during the make_all_indices
> > script, they didn't actually change anything :P
> 
> Which ones are those? I'll take a peek.
> 
the three 'make_toc_xxxx.pl' files all came up when i grep'd for some of
the html lines, and the code in them is exactly the same as the html the
instruction pages spit out.  however, when i edit them and rebuild the
sources, the instruction pages don't change at all.  i hope you have
better luck with this than i did :)

> > i'm not very familiar with xml yet, but i've been meaning to learn. 
> > what exactly would be needed in order to move this whole thing over to
> > xml files?
> 
> 1) An XML format; wouldn't need to be more complicated (at first) than
> <test>
> <component></component>     }- these two might be optional- i.e., if
> null/not present, then just build them from the dir structure?
> <subcomponent></component>  }
> <testcasename></testcasename>
> <testaim></testaim>
> <procedure></procedure>
> </test>
> but this is just a suggestion; I'm sure some XML gurus on the list will
> have a better idea.
> 
> 2) a perl script to convert the current HTML into that format
> 
> 3) some php magic to read the XML and convert it into something
> prettified for the web. Since this new HTML would be dynamically
> generated, I figure it would be easy to edit/make prettier/prune useless
> info/etc. Also, since the data is in a nice, parseable format, I'd hope
> it would be trivial to add the <testaim> field to the test page, and
> thus dispense with the table of contents page altogether (maybe.) 
> 
it seems manuel will be able to look at this on wednsday, but if he
needs any help, i could at least get the php part taken care of for him.

btw, congrats to you and all your co-workers on evolution 1.0.  i just
got it to compile here on slack 8.0, and its absolutely fantastic. 
great job! :)

todd