[Petal] Output modifier idea

[William McKee]

On 22 Aug 2002 at 10:52, Jean-Michel Hiver wrote:
> Automagic hyperlinking is **much bigger** a job than it appears at the
> first glance, and I think that's beyond the scope of Petal. Our content
> management system MKDoc does it.

Yeah, I have a feeling I'm getting into deep waters here. Perhaps the 
module Chris pointed out will help me get the job done without too much 
ado.

> If you want to see how I implemented it I recommend that you download
> MKDoc [1] (although it's commercial software you can download it for
> evaluation purposes) and that you take a look at the MKDoc::XML::* suite of
> modules.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check it out.

> When your get our head around it you might want to write a Petal
> modifier, but I don't think it would be sensible to insert it in the
> Petal core.

Agreed.

> Makes me think that I really need to work out a plugin system so that
> you could install Petal modifiers a la CPAN, i.e. with a make && make
> test && make install. Then you could upload your Petal modifiers to
> CPAN, that'd be cool :-)

Yes, that would be nice! It seems like you could have the CodeGenerator 
which calls the process sub in the modifier modules scan the Petal::Hash 
directory for all modules and load them automatically. As I suggested in 
an earlier email, it'd be nice to turn off this auto-load ability so that 
folks can selectively load modules using the existing framework.

William

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