This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Subject: [OT] RAD cgi-form development From: Alan Mead <adm@ipat.com> Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 16:09:30 -0500 From time to time I spend what seems like an inordinate amount of time creating multi-page forms. I create them by hand-coding HTML and Perl using CGI.pm. Because they are multi-form, I code the Perl to write the HTML "on the fly" as in Lincoln Stein's CGI.pm book. But I typically want to use tables to align things. In fact, I find that I spend a lot of time switching between my code and my browser getting everything aligned well, sync'ing names and other values, etc. And fixing typos and "think-o's" in my Perl. I think I would spend a lot less time (or satisfice less) if I had a WYSIWYG tool that allowed HTML elements to be dropped onto a canvas and then configured (named, given properties, etc.; like Window's Delphi and VB, if you are familiar). And then this ideal tool would write out proper Perl CGI.pm syntax. If it added javascript verification, that would be cool too. Anyone heard of such a beast? It seems like all the tools I'm familiar with (and I just put down a typically mediocre PC Magazine article about HTML generators) either focus exclusively on generating HTML or are not WYSIWYG. Obviously, I would VERY MUCH PREFER that I use it in a Linux/X11 environment. I looked through the rpmfind site and couldn't see anything like this; in fact, I couldn't find any WYSIWYG HTML editor except Communicator and Amaya (which crashed within seconds of launching). === Subject: Re: [OT] RAD cgi-form development From: "Anthony E. Greene" <agreene@pobox.com> Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 11:47:48 +0200 At 16:09 2000-05-09 -0500, Alan Mead wrote: > From time to time I spend what seems like an inordinate amount of time >creating multi-page forms. I create them by hand-coding HTML and Perl >using CGI.pm. Because they are multi-form, I code the Perl to write the >HTML "on the fly" as in Lincoln Stein's CGI.pm book. But I typically want >to use tables to align things. [snip] When I want to RAD something like this, I typically forgo CGI.pm's HTML generation. I just create the HTML the way I want and just insert the print commands, escapes, and 'here document' markers as needed. === Subject: Re: [OT] RAD cgi-form development From: Charles Galpin <cgalpin@lighthouse-software.com> Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 07:54:02 -0400 (EDT) Alan I have done this (in php but the concepts apply) by writing a form generation "engine" that manages the state of the form, and fills values into templates. So you create templates with the html editor of your choosing with minimal markup for the specific form values on that page, and the engine fills them in, manages state etc. the code that fills out form values, extracts and validates form values is only written once. It's a completely different approach that what you are asking for, but worked quite well for me. ymmv. === Subject: RE: [OT] RAD cgi-form development From: "Tanner, Robby" <TANNER@Wardrop.com> Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 16:24:18 -0500 For getting things lined up, you could consider Microsoft FrontPage. Once you get things formatted, open your HTML in Linux and add the other stuff from there. ===