Re: CSS & MHonArc markup experiment

[Earl Hood <earl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On March 8, 2004 at 18:46, Roger Wong wrote:

> > Or better, have a complete template for each page type
> > vs the separate layout resources.
> 
> I whole-heartedly agree with this statement/suggestion! Having separate
> resources to deal with--though probably more flexible--is a major pain. I
> just went through customizing them all to fit my personal needs, but it took
> me 3 days and I think it should've taken me just 1. (Disclaimer: I'm a
> graphic designer, not a techie.) I would have loved to be able to just
> create 3 HTML pages (date index, thread index, and message index) with
> special '$' tags and be done with it. Instead I had to go through probably a
> couple dozen resources to get OK results.

The big problems are:

* Compatibility: Any big change like this introduces compatibility
  issues.  Of course, compatibility could be ignored, which would
  cause a "fork" in MHonArc.

* Loop-based constructs: The index pages are the best examples.

Someone mentioned using the Perl Template Tookit, but I have
yet to evaluate it.

Regardless, I consider such changes a major change to MHonArc and
probably an incompatible change to existing releases.  If (when)
such changes are made, they should be part of a rewrite.

--ewh