[Vimoutliner] Auto pretty printing from Apache

[Peter Princz]

Hello Mahlon,

On 06/02/07, Mahlon E. Smith <mahlon at martini.nu> wrote:
>
> I knew I forgot something.  How about a download link?  :)
>
> http://www.martini.nu/misc/otl_handler.tgz
>
> --
> Mahlon E. Smith
> http://www.martini.nu/contact.html
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 06, 2007, Mahlon E. Smith wrote:
> >
> > ... part deux.
> >
> > I've refactored a bunch of the Apache::OTL parser to produce XHTML
> > compliant source, and break away from the apache 1.3 environment.  The
> > handler now supports the Apache 2.x / mod_perl2, and with its default
> > 'ul/li' output, should be much easier (and predictable) to customize
> > with css/javascript.
> >
> > A live sample can be found here:
> >
> >     http://www.martini.nu/sample.otl
> >
> > Enjoy!
> >
> > --
> > Mahlon E. Smith
> > http://www.martini.nu/contact.html
>
>
>

the parser is wonderful, but I have a usability problem, please give a hint.

I use vimoutliner daily, run projects in parallel, and have to report
to various managers weekly.
I was advised to use ms project, however it turned out the target
audience does not have it on their computers (yes, the managers :o),
so I'm printing my reports into pdf weekly and send them out as email
attachments. This is a pain for everyone: I'm much less productive in
ms project than in vimoutliner, they get human-unreadable format even
in pdf. (No project server, no publish/subscribe for progress reports,
only a solitaire ms project on my PC and email clients at the
managers.)

As an employee I also must obey to some corporate standards, i.e. use
windows xp and do not maintain internal web server. OK, I can
workaround this by compiling Apache and otl_handler under win32.
(Easier said than done, I'm still struggling with libapreq2 to get it
work under win32.) And then to use this Apache for a parser only, and
send out the generated html files as email attachments.

And here the problem begins: as with most pages containing css and js,
saving even your live sample results not only in a plain html, but
with a populated "_files" directory as well with the css and the two
js files, one of them containing only comments. This is normal, I just
want to point out this tiny detail almost disqualifies the otherwise
elegant and brilliant solution for my purposes: I have to zip the
thing into one file, and hope the mgr at the other end will be able to
unzip it. This is sometimes a too high expectation. I really cannot
decide between otl2html and otl_handler: the former produces one file
and is easy to distribute, the latter responds to expand/collapse thus
easier to navigate.

What do you think? Can this all css/js thing be folded into the html
file? That would be great and decisive.
Sorry if the question is obvious, I'm not an html developer. I realise
this is not the intended use of your parser, I'm just asking if it
could be used as an off-line parser.

Have a nice day,
  Peter

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