Andy Wardley <abw@cre.canon.co.uk> 05-Dec-97 
--------------------------------------------

I have two Perl modules due for imminent release:

App::                General application development tools
::Config       bdpO  Configuration file mgmt                      ABW +

Text::
::MetaText     bdp0  Text processing/markup meta-language         ABW +

#------------------------------------------------------------------------

App::Config

  A generic application module for managing configuration information.  
  Command line parameters and configuration files can be parsed by the 
  module, setting the state of internal variables accordingly.  

#------------------------------------------------------------------------

Text::MetaText  

    MetaText is a text processing and markup meta-language. This
    module is a Perl 5 extension implementing an object which
    processes text files, interpreting and acting on the embedded
    MetaText directives within.

    Like a glorified pre-processor, it can; include files, define
    and then re-interpret variable values, execute conditional
    actions based on variables, call other perl functions and
    capture the output back into the document. It can format the
    resulting output of any of these operations in a number of ways.
    The objects and inherently, the format and symantics of the
    MetaText langauge itself, are highly configurable.

    MetaText was originally designed to aid in the creation of html
    documents in a large web site. It remains well suited for this
    and similar tasks, being able to create web pages (dynamically
    or statically) that are consistent with each other, yet easily
    customisable:

    *   standard headers, footers and other elements can be defined in
        separate files and then inserted into web documents with an
        embedded text tag:

            %% INCLUDE filename %%

    *   variables can be defined externally or from within a document,
        then can be substituted back into the text. This is useful
        for including your %% name %% or %% email %% address or any
        other variable, and for encoding URL's or file paths that
        can then be changed en masse. e.g.

            <img src="%% images %%/foo/bar.gif">

    *   conditional actions can be made based on variable definitions,
        allowing easily and instantly customisable web pages. e.g

            %% INCLUDE higraphics/header if="higfx && userid != abw" %%

    *   blocks of text can be internally defined simplifying the
        creation of repetitive documents or text elements. e.g.

            %% BLOCK table_row %%
            <tr> <td>%% userid %%</td> <td>%% name %%</td> </tr>
            %% ENDBLOCK %%

            %% INCLUDE table_row userid=lwall  name="Larry Wall"         %%
            %% INCLUDE table_row userid=tomc   name="Tom Christiansen"   %%
            %% INCLUDE table_row userid=merlyn name="Randal L. Schwartz" %%

    *   in addition, the metapage utility is a script which can
        automatically traverse document trees, processing updated
        files to assist in web document management and other similar
        tasks.