[Gap-dev-discuss] RFC: Automating website building

[Sebastian Reitenbach]

Hi,

since the amount of applications on GAP is rising, I think maintaining the 
website is getting more and more a headache.
Think that when you want to add a menu entry in the menu on the left, you want 
to edit about 40 or more pages
and add that link? Already now, not all pages have the same menu on the left....

I don't think that we would need a CMS to manage those few pages, in my eyes, 
that would be overkill, someone has to maintain it, and must know, how to use 
it, especially creating the templates and so on.

I more thought about programmatically creating the single pages. Dividing the 
pages into a header, the main body, and a footer (which would be the menu on 
the right).
Each page would consist of a header (I think choosing one of two or three 
should be enough), the main body of the page, and the footer, which would be 
the menu on the right. A steering file for each single page would define how 
its build, and a script, parsing this information would take the right header, 
body and footer to build the page.

Writing something in Objective-c, is probably overkill, make a little change, 
and you have to recompile, probably just too much hassle. Then I thought about 
a shell script, but string manipulation with regexps is not the strength of 
shells, and 
probably have to use awk, sed, and other tools. Then with shell, its likely 
that the shells itself, or the tools used are incompatible
on different platforms, and this might become a nightmare to maintain. Then I 
thought about Perl or Python, which are probably better suited, I don't know 
much enough about them, to easily create what I have in mind. So, now I suggest 
to use TCL. I know, Perl or Python are probably more widely known, but TCL is 
what I know and would be able to use. Besides that, TCL is also well suited for 
the job. String manipulation is one of its strengths, and you can easily 
create/manipulate 
(multidimensional) arrays and dictionaries. All what would be needed, would be 
available when just installing TCL 8.5.X or newer, no external packages needed. 
TCL should be available on any modern platform, so wherever someone wants 
to update the websites, it should be possible without hassle.

For the beginning, I'd try to keep things as easy as possible:
 * just having two types of headers:
   * one for "normal" pages, i.e. just the top image
   * one for "application" pages, i.e. including everything up to the ruler 
below the "Description" "Screenshots" and "Download" section
 * Then having the body of the pages, just Free Form HTML, going down to the 
bottom of the pages.
 * Then a footer of the HTML page, which would build a consistent menu on the 
right for each page.

Afterwards, someone could think of generating the list of applications on the 
main index.html page automatically, or the list on the information/apps.html 
page. It should also be fairly easy to create an RSS Feed for the GAP Core News.

Any comments on that?
Generally a good/bad idea?
Good idea in general, but TCL would be a no-go?
Comments in any direction are welcome.

cheers,
Sebastian