htmlpp - The HTML Preprocessor

Overview

What is htmlpp?

Htmlpp is a pre-processor for HTML documents.
Its purpose is to simplify the work of writing and packaging large numbers of HTML documents.
It acts like a compiler: you provide an input source text and htmlpp produces the HTML documents from that. This is easier and safer than trying to edit and manage separate HTML documents.
To use htmlpp, you should be comfortable writing HTML without help from a special HTML editor. This is not usually a problem, since HTML is a simple language.
Htmlpp is free software written in Perl, and copyright (c) 1996-97 iMatix. It is distributed with full sources according to the GNU General Public License.

What does htmlpp do?

It breaks one input source text file into several HTML documents. Typically you will want to edit a larger file (it is faster and easier), but provide the information in smaller pieces on-line (people can access it easier). Htmlpp makes this possible.
It lets you define symbols like version in one place, then use these in the text like this: $(version) so that you can make changes in a single place only, not throughout the text.
It creates tables of contents, and links to chain pages together in sequence.
It adds headers and footers to pages, so that you can keep a consistent style in all HTML pages.
It lets you define macros to simplify HTML markup.
It converts plain text into HTML using guru mode.
It converts accented characters into HTML metacharacters.

How do I use htmlpp?

Take a look at htmlpp.txt, which is the documentation source for htmlpp's own on-line documentation. This is the main example for htmlpp.
The files in template.zip provide the basic template for a new project. This zip file is provided as part of the htmlpp package.
Edit the source text using any text editor, then run htmlpp on the source. It produces a number of HTML files (extension .htm) which you can test using a browser.
In general, htmlpp generates HTML pages that use relative addressing, so that pages refer to each other without specifying a host or path. This allows you to test and use the HTML pages on a local hard disk.

Where do I get htmlpp?

Htmlpp is available from the iMatix website as a zip file for Windows or DOS or OS/2 and as a tgz file for UNIX. Both contain the same files.

What else should I know?

Htmlpp uses Perl 4 or Perl 5. It does not use any system-specific features, so will run on any box (I wrote it mostly under MS-DOS; it's been used on heavily on UNIX and OS/2).
Perl is a programming language written by Larry Wall that is freely available for many platforms. If you never installed or used Perl, this is an excellent time to start.
Under MS-DOS, you will need Big Perl to process large documents.

What Are The Alternatives?

A lot of work by hand.
A number of other products work somewhat like htmlpp. Take a look at the eponymously named htmlpp at http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/nthiery.