title:pagemaker:pagemaker:Software:Web Page Maker
main:Web Page Making Tool
page:index:Web Page Making Tool
This is the tool I use to create most of the web pages on this site
(including the ones you are reading now).
It takes a description file and generates a set
of web pages.  If photos are referenced, then you will need the PNM
toolset to create the small and large versions of the photos.
page:download:Dowloads
<ul>
  <li><a href="webby">Web Page Maker</a> - the Perl script which
  creates the web pages
  <li><a href="imgconv">Image Converter</a> - the script I use for
  generating the images at the right sizes for displaying
</ul>
page:webby:Web Page Maker
This is a Perl script which takes a configuration file and generates
web pages from it.  As an example, take a look at the <a
href="web.conf">config file</a> which generated these pages.
<p>

There are 6 special tags that can be used.  Everything else is placed
verbatim into the appropriate web page and so all HTML syntax is
valid.  Be careful, however, not to begin a line with one of the
special tags (though they need to be immediately followed by a colon
to be treated as a tag).
<p>

The special tags are:
<dl>
  <dt>photosrc:DIRECTORY-SPEC</dt>
    <dd>The location of the original photos used on these pages (this
    is currently not used but a future version will take these photos
    and run the <code>imgconv</code> script to generate the images
    actually used in the pages).</dd>
  <dt>title:NAME:DIRECTORY:TITLE</dt>
    <dd>This is used to specify the entry page for the set.  A file
    <code>NAME.html</code> will be generated in the current directory
    and all referenced pages will be created in <code>DIRECTORY</code>
    and <code>TITLE</code> will be used in the <code>&lt;title></code>
    tag in each generated page.</dd>
  <dt>main:HEADING</dt>
    <dd>This text will be used as the main heading in the front page
    for this set.</dd>
  <dt>page:FILE:HEADING</dt>
    <dd>All the following contents up to the next <code>page</code>
    tag will go into the file <code>FILE.html</code> in the directory
    specified by the <code>title</code> tag.  The front page will also
    get a hyperlink to the file using this <code>HEADING</code> which
    will also form the main heading for this page.</dd>
  <dt>tag:TAG</dt>
    <dd>Normally, each generated page uses the <code>HEADING</code>
    text to generate links forward and backwards.  If that text is
    overly long, then this tag allows you to specify a shorter form.</dd>
  <dt>photo:PHOTO</dt>
    <dd>The contents up to the next <code>photo</code> or
    <code>page</code> tag will be used as a caption for the specified
    image.  It is expected that there exists both
    <code>DIRECTORY/small/PHOTO</code> (used inline in this page) and
    <code>DIRECTORY/pics/PHOTO</code> (displayed when the smaller
    image is selected).  The <code>imgconv</code> application
    generates both of these from the original at appropriate sizes.</dd>
</dl>

Here is a further example of a <a href="../../hols/Kenya/web.conf">config
file</a> which was used to generate pages of my holiday to <a
href="../../hols/kenya.html">Kenya</a>.
page:imgconv:Image Converter
This is a script to take original images and generate the images used
by the web pages created.  This script must be run once for each image
supplying the image file and the base directory for the resulting web
pages.
<p>

The base directory used and subdirectories <code>small</code>
and <code>pics</code> will be created if they do not already exist.
<p>

The original will be scaled to generate a small image which is no more
than 256 pixels wide and 192 pixels high (maintaining aspect ratio)
and a larger image no more than 1024 pixels wide and 768 pixels high.
The images created will be the largest that fir these criteria.
<p>

The script uses <code>jpegtopnm</code>, <code>pnmscale</code> and
<code>ppmtojpeg</code> from the PPM toolset.  These also have the
advantage of generating quite small files by using JPEG compression
techniques without noticably degrading image quality which helps
prevent your pages from taking too long to download for users.
<p>

Note that the script was designed to use the <code>bash</code> shell
and the first line should be edited to reflect this shell's location
on your site.  If you do not have <code>bash</code>, then you should
be able to use the korn shell (<code>ksh</code>) instead.