Re: (LONG) Scheme HTML design program - my idea and request for c omments

["Patrick Giagnocavo" <a222@redrose.net>]

> [... snip Frontier discussion ... ]
> 
> So far the concepts you describe are very generic.  Any of a half-dozen
> language tools could be used to meet your goal.  So there is certainly
> no reason why Scheme would not be an excellent choice.

Hello Brent,

Yes, I think Scheme would be a good choice in a lot of ways.

1.  I want something with a "real" language and some sort of object system
available, so that "power users" can go as deep as they want.  This is
needed not only for me (though I am not a guru in anything) but also to
attract others so that there can be a chance of having a community of users.

This means that tcl/tk is out (no objects) and Python might be the only
other choice (there is no Perl/Tk for MacOS that I am aware of).  Some have
criticized Python for its indenting rules and its OOP constructs.

2.  I want something that can be kept very simple, so that "point and click"
users can get started right away.   Once the templates for a site have been
designed, the actual text editing can be pretty much plain text.

I want a tool that I can use, and that I can give someone less sophisticated
to handle updates of text.

For instance, assume that the site design and navigation is completed, and
the site has been rendered out to static HTML files.  Now, the customer
hires two new people to the company and want to have new company bios on the
same page as the other bios.

Under Frontier (and the system I propose) they could do that, simply by
editing the text for that page, and re-rendering those HTML files.

Under other systems, I would have to train the person on all kinds of other
parts of the tool, just to be certain that they didn't screw anything up.

Or they would have to call me and I would have to do it for them.  While I
could no doubt earn a comfortable living by having enough clients to do this
kind of work for, I think the clients would come to resent me and I know
that gruntwork is not a good career choice no matter how well it pays.

> As I mentioned above, none of your options are limited to Scheme for any
> particular reason.  However, I've actually just started working to embed
> MzScheme in the AOLserver.  The various levels of parsing I anticipate
> (i.e., features will be similar to PHP and CGI for some work, plus the
> ability to load AOLserver modules written in Scheme).  So these two
> projects could certainly be mutually beneficial.

I am very glad to hear this; as I mentioned before, the idea of scripting in
Scheme and then having the output be HTML pages + code to make things
dynamic would be very useful.

> However, it will probably take me a few weeks to get things running since
> I have to study the MzScheme C API before I can figure out the best
> way to go about the work.

Please be sure to let the folks at both www.aolserver.com and at
photo.net/wtr know about your work on this.  Phil Greenspun (who runs a lot
of AOLserver sites)is a Lisp hacker.

Cordially

Patrick Giagnocavo
a222@redrose.net