[Linkbat-writers] [Linkbat-everyone] The Linkbat "product" - comments requested

[James M. <lin...@ji...>]

Hi All!

Since I got the rights back to my books, I have been thinking about putting 
the material together as a single package so that it can be installed on 
other machines without having to deal with the data files, cgi scripts, etc. 
This means a number of major changes.

The first question is whether or not this makes sense to do it. Since the site 
went online I have received a number of request to provide the material on a 
CD, PDF, tarball, etc. Since I had the licensing problem, I couldn't before. 
Now I can. When we package linkbat (not if), it needs to be easy to install. 
Obviously, with single pages with no cgi, the user can simply drag and drop 
it into a filesystem to view it (even on Windows). 

This means two sets of code, one for the web and one for the "package". At the 
very least we need to expand the code to allow (maybe by passing arguments to 
the sub-routines, telling it to create it for the web or for a "package".

We obviously need the code to create the pages. The existing code was designed 
to present it dynamically on the web. However, the functionality is there. It 
need to be modularized so that each function delivers single pieces of 
information. Next, we need the mechanisms that creates the completed page set 
so that that can be accessed easly. This means creating the menus, glossary 
and more info pages, etc. 

The other alternative is to package the existing code in a way that they can 
easily install it on their own site. It is already pretty modularized and 
there are just a few places where you need to make path changes: At the very 
least there is just a single config file that needs to be modified. 

However, I would still like to eventually make the entire site available as a 
PDF (i.e a book). That would require the same code (plus some) to strip out 
or convert all of the HTML elements. 

There are obviously a lot more questions to answer, but I am trying to get a 
feel for what direction to go. What do the rest of you think?

Regards,

Jim 

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