Potential Commission: "Super WebPage Post-Processor"

[TaoPhoenix]

Okay gang, having made friends, fans, the token enemy, and a donation, now it's time to see where the economics of this site are.

I spent all night testing out about fifteen web author tools and only one came marginally close to something that I would like.

After years of writer's blocks and short attention spans, I finally stumbled upon the "Tree Pads" as a tool that creates nested nodes of notes and can power-export the entire database as a dynamic web page.

Trouble is, it's just a bit bare. It would be nice if those pages were end-capped by some templating.

In a sense, it's a third cousin type app to my PGN processor, in that it should be just straight text manipulation tucking the note into a web template. So that's why I say "It isn't that hard" - sure there are quirks, but the concept feels simple - take X supported template, drop the note text into the middle of it, and resave the file, and recurse for all the eligible files in a folder.

In a minute I'll post a brutal sandpaper-rough example of the output from the only program was was even in the ballpark.

I'd peg the value to me at about $50.

Anyone interested?

[TaoPhoenix]

Original Batch Page:
http://www.freevoteusa.com/index.html

Eye-Bleeding demo of concept:
http://taophoenix.deckerservices.com/Tests/toc22.html

That was from the free NetObjects Fusion Essentials. (I crossed the gray line and downloaded a copy of NOF 11 cracked, and the same page didn't even load! Saved $200.)

It's important to me to retain that dynamic collapsing menu.

Anyone dare to take this on?  Or am I a deluded aging birdie?

[TaoPhoenix]

Okay, Update -

No one bit at this, I get it.

Meanwhile, a promising approach seems to be to smash the output site / text into a CSV styler design. Then it becomes a Universal page. But this still needs work.

[rgdot]

I was wondering along the same lines recently http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=30173

[skwire]

take X supported template, drop the note text into the middle of it, and resave the file, and recurse for all the eligible files in a folder.

Question, does the "note text" go into the same place in the template every time?

So, as an example:

1) Read in text contents of note_text_1.txt file.
2) Read in template.html file.
3) Insert note_text_1.txt file contents into a specified place within the template file.
4) Save off combined contents as note_text_1.html.
5) Lather, rinse, repeat for other note_text_#.txt files.

Is this what you're after?

[Ath]

Could my Excel2Html be a starting point of what you want? The input should ofcourse be changed to your database from the current Excel file

[TaoPhoenix]

Quick note to Ath - that sounds like something interesting for a different question. Excel isn't anywhere near this in the original components. On the far side of a use case is whether someone uses Excel as part of the solution with something else ahead of it on the front end.

[TaoPhoenix]

Skwire, you're on the wavelength, but there are some sneaky things to solve under the hood. That's why this is a commission, because I feel it's def. more than a "Coding Snack". Probably a "Coding Lunch". 

I'm not sure what it does to my writing style, but the text would go in the same "places, plural" because many templates have little call-out boxes. Not counting copyright situations, a big inspiration is the CSS Zen Garden. I have a vague psychology experiment planned dealing with taking the same articles and dropping them (with this proposed app) into different templates and suddenly it looks like entirely different sites.

The genius of the "Tree Database" program I found is that all the misery of hand linking and uploading pages is gone - I can just type updates large and small all across my articles, and then smash out the whole thing into an entire site. In fancy business terms it's related to "Turnkey".

[TaoPhoenix]

Meanwhile, the code text is a bit of a gooey html with a lot of duplicate-looking formatting, so the starting file isn't plain text, it's a web page, hence the thread title.

I think a key feature is for the app to read a proposed CSS design and intelligently find the (Spans?) etc where the text goes, so that outside of Zen Garden I can go to places on the net with free CSS templates etc.

Absolutely crucial is for the app to read the entire site folder with its nested items, figure out the whole linked site, and output a similar/paired site that "just works".

Maybe later on another task I'd want an upgrade/other app that adds chat boxes/site comments/etc. I don't know what that's about yet.

More essential features - I  kinda dislike databases, because it's "all that data in a big blob". I did a modestly detailed study of "Tree Databases" a while back, and in a close call this one beat out the runner up because it created mostly intelligent child html files. (The other one felt like it was creating "data trap" because the output files were total gibberish.) But the html files are not quite perfect - "FreedomCody1436.html, IHateSOPA2334.html" etc. So the app should be able to do a mass file rename, check if there are any collisions, and if not, take all the numbers off of the ends.

It should be able to "clean up the code" on the child pages too. Another plus of the winning program is that all told, the pages aren't artificially obfuscated. They just offend my simplicity aesthetics by blasting out (thematically, the syntax is fake) "Format Arial 10 pt font left justified &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp position justified=1 border pixel=2" for every paragraph or such. I roughly think all that is the job of the CSS side, so I think the right result is just simple barebones html and <BR> breaks. (And even when I'm not using CSS then I let browsers pick their own defaults anyway so clean code is nicer on my eyes.)

More things - it should do light graphics handling to insert icons and text into the graphics, and be able to do extremely basic graphic management, maybe checking for missing graphics and making a list, and maybe a rough pixel count or something of the graphics width against a rough width of the text, so that when my long topic names trail in an ugly mess off the graphic I can get a list of which graphics to go open in an editor and try to expand or something.

Be ready for a couple more features as they pop up.

The intended license is one of the Creative Commons variants that I'll figure out later.

We'll have to check with Mouser on NANY to do dual credit so I am Commissioner (uh... or something) and the coder(s!?) get NANY credit (but I don't want to wait til December!) because the point of the site is creating fun software but I can't pay any of your "billable rates" - about all I can roughly allocate is the initial $50 and possibly another $50 on either part 2 or a second app.

Regards to all,

--Tao

[TaoPhoenix]

Elsewhere I'll go into a couple of dissertations on the theme of commissions - I think it's in the running for part of the future of the web.

Also there could be other commissions later on if anyone else is generally interested.

[skwire]

I'm going to pass on this one; I don't have time for such a complex project.

[TaoPhoenix]

I'm going to pass on this one; I don't have time for such a complex project.

Thanks for looking and responding though, Skwire.

[TaoPhoenix]

What's the sweet spot for this kind of App? And for apps of this rough range of complexity?

About the highest I can go is a shade over $100.