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To access the contents, click the chapter and section titles.
Perl CGl Programming: No experience required.
Table 8.3 lists the available format codes for #config timefmt.
A Last Word on SSIAs you have seen, the server-side includes extend the utility of HTML by allowing you to place instructions to the Web server directly in the document that makes up a Web page. SSI can add a great deal of power to your Web site. Even if your Web server doesnt have SSI capabilities included in it, the chances are quite good that a later release willprobably very soon. Its well worth your trouble to get to know SSI. Generating Graphics on the FlyHTML generally knows what to do with graphical images in the proper formats, but it expects the graphics to be passed to it in the form of files, either in GIF or JPEG format. This ability necessarily means that the graphics have to be in a file, pregenerated and hard-coded into the URL that the Web page will call up, as in: <IMG SRC="graphic.jpg"> Within this context, generating dynamic information graphically would seem to be a bit of a problem. If the only way the Web page can display a graphical image is by calling up a file, how do you change the file based on the visitors input? In other words, how can you generate graphical images that base themselves on what the visitor has entered into the Web page or on any other criterion that hangs explicitly on this individual visitor? Well, first of all, HTML isnt limited exclusively to files as a medium of input for displaying graphics. Second of all, theres Ghostscript. Creating Graphics with GhostscriptPostScript is another programming language, this one invented by Adobe Systems in the mid-1980s as a page description languagea way to format pages of graphical text so they could be sent to a printer or typesetter and printed in the way they were set up on the computer screen. From this convention sprang the acronym WYSIWYG (pronounced wiz-ee-wig), for What You See Is What You Get, meaning that what you set up on the computer screen would be what gets spit out of the printer or typesetter. Adobe Illustrator and Pagemaker, both hugely popular programs for more than a decade, utilized this technology from the beginning. Now most commercial publishing is done with PostScript. Of course, Adobe owns PostScript and will require a large sum of money from anyone who would use it. Luckily, however, theres the Free Software Foundation and its cleverly named freeware PostScript clone: Ghostscript. FSF, flying the banner GNUs Not UNIX!, started its GNU Project in 1984, primarily to develop and distribute a free version of the UNIX operating system, source code and all. Since then, the foundation has trolled into waters heretofore patrolled exclusively by Bill Gates and his jolly brigandsa CD-ROM full of source code for Windows NT goodies was shipped by the GNU folks within months of NTs initial release.
Ghostscript is a program that interprets PostScript code into a variety of formats, including at least oneJPEGthat you can use on your Web site. PostScript code, like Perl, consists of text statements that describe the desired actions to the interpreter. Unlike Perl, PostScript deals mainly with graphics and formatted text.
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