Re: [site-engine-dev] Hello...

[MJ Ray]

> I find the idea of using Scheme as a web development language very 
> interesting.

Well, it actually has some interesting opportunities to offer, especially
through the use of macros, but more on that a bit later.

I'll come clean and admit that scheme web dev is currently rather primitive. 
I'm developing a lot of the basic libraries as part of this project,
although the versions now in CVS need replacing with newer ones I've been
using elsewhere.  Here's a quick look at the more interesting bits:

I've a fasttemplate function.  In the copy in CVS, this is used absolutely
everywhere, but I intend it only to be used to wrap the site in a top-level
"skin" in future.  "Themes" will be a bit more fundamental, involving
different functionality or presentations of that functionality.  Eventually,
it will be possible to write themes in XML and import them to the site,
though.  Just so lisp-phobics can use the system and because we can.

I've an xexprxml serialiser.  You can see this beauty at work in the chapter
on CGI scripting at http://www.htus.org/  -- of course, I've taken this name
in an attempt to make it easier to port the system to mzscheme-200 when that
is released, if it looks like a good idea.  I started trying to develop it
in mzscheme-113, but the difficult unit/sig system made it impossible to do
in a short time that was needed to get http://tsw.org.uk/ up and running
(well, sort of stumbling).

I'm currently rethrashing the database interface (current functions: open,
close, find, insert, update and raw -- how does that sound?) and I'm going
to make the current site modules more practical, so that the theme only has
to concern itself with generating presentation, not with calculating things. 
I need to define the module<->theme interface better.  That's the next task
when I have time to do it.

> Come to think of it, our projects are very similar... I run Perl-Fusion 

Yes, we share many goals, including modularisation and keeping non-coders
out of the code.  I can't directly port php-nuke, although it shouldn't be a
secret that I've one eye on its features.

> Anyway, I like the idea of helping site-engine mainly because it sounds fun. 

Glad to have you on hand.  I hope I can make it fun.  I find developing in
scheme quite a lot of fun, but that's mostly because I hate debugging ;-)
-- 
MJR