MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Comments? server-side book-like html?

pittendrigh · 03-16-2020, 09:41 PM

git clone https://github.com/pittendrigh/robopages

RE> "great idea" ........thank you. I've been selling passwords that grant access to online blueprints and boat building instructions since 2005. These codes are the current state of that 15 year evolution. Web pages that attempt to teach something complex NEED to look and act like a book. An online book needs some global navigation that never goes away, that appears on all pages no matter what (chapters, for instance, but perhaps other things too like links to a "contact me" form.

But a online book also needs locally dynamic navigation, that changes slightly for each new page. Or at least for each new chapter the user enters. These codes have all of that. They just need polishing.

I've been running my "display epub3" for boat building instructions (that I sell for $25) for a bit over a year now. I edit an epub3 on my desktop. scp it up. Unzip it and it displays. But I'm old and stubborn and I realize now I need to be able to edit directly, on the server. Perhaps in a test subdomain but I need it that way.

So I ditched the epub3 display and made the above. I've got some of it running on my website now. On a free page. It's too buggy to marry to what I sell just yet. But I like it.

I like the plain Jane HTML. The TOC has top-level "chapters" that always appear. Below that additional navigation appears dynamically depending upon which chapter you are currently viewing. There are slide shows and photo galleries if you want them. The slide shows depend on running perl and/or python scripts. There is an Admin GUI that maintains everything but this new code. Adding these new HTML book-like codes to the Admin GUI will happen eventually. I never use that Admin GUI but I do have one customer (who has a site running my software). So I made it for him.

There is also page sequencing. That depends on a text file initially generated by a python script. I can make manual changes to the page sequencing file with vi. If I then run tocit.py again I don't lose my manual changes. tocit.py is smart enough to maintain the previous sequencing, while doing its best to insert an new chapter sub-folders and/or pages in the right place in the (p2n) file. PageUrl to PageNumber hash file. The codes maintain a page to number hash, a page number to page url hash and a numerical array of Urls, which the codes use to keep the sequence order.

This is fun code for me but a long way from prime time. I just thought I'd ask for some feedback. I'll work on it (on and off) for the next few months. And then perhaps announce an alpha release.

03-16-2020, 09:41 PM	#3
pittendrigh Connoisseur Posts: 78 Karma: 1332336 Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: montana Device: none	git clone https://github.com/pittendrigh/robopages RE> "great idea" ........thank you. I've been selling passwords that grant access to online blueprints and boat building instructions since 2005. These codes are the current state of that 15 year evolution. Web pages that attempt to teach something complex NEED to look and act like a book. An online book needs some global navigation that never goes away, that appears on all pages no matter what (chapters, for instance, but perhaps other things too like links to a "contact me" form. But a online book also needs locally dynamic navigation, that changes slightly for each new page. Or at least for each new chapter the user enters. These codes have all of that. They just need polishing. I've been running my "display epub3" for boat building instructions (that I sell for $25) for a bit over a year now. I edit an epub3 on my desktop. scp it up. Unzip it and it displays. But I'm old and stubborn and I realize now I need to be able to edit directly, on the server. Perhaps in a test subdomain but I need it that way. So I ditched the epub3 display and made the above. I've got some of it running on my website now. On a free page. It's too buggy to marry to what I sell just yet. But I like it. I like the plain Jane HTML. The TOC has top-level "chapters" that always appear. Below that additional navigation appears dynamically depending upon which chapter you are currently viewing. There are slide shows and photo galleries if you want them. The slide shows depend on running perl and/or python scripts. There is an Admin GUI that maintains everything but this new code. Adding these new HTML book-like codes to the Admin GUI will happen eventually. I never use that Admin GUI but I do have one customer (who has a site running my software). So I made it for him. There is also page sequencing. That depends on a text file initially generated by a python script. I can make manual changes to the page sequencing file with vi. If I then run tocit.py again I don't lose my manual changes. tocit.py is smart enough to maintain the previous sequencing, while doing its best to insert an new chapter sub-folders and/or pages in the right place in the (p2n) file. PageUrl to PageNumber hash file. The codes maintain a page to number hash, a page number to page url hash and a numerical array of Urls, which the codes use to keep the sequence order. This is fun code for me but a long way from prime time. I just thought I'd ask for some feedback. I'll work on it (on and off) for the next few months. And then perhaps announce an alpha release. Last edited by pittendrigh; 03-16-2020 at 09:51 PM.