I know almost nothing about the use of AppleScript in print publishing,
so I haven't got a clue how it might be used in web publishing either.
I
assume it is, in some capacity...
Can anyone point me to an overview of how AS might be used in the
process
of generating complex HTML pages? My guess is AS would be used to fill
in existing templates rather than creating entire pages at a time, but
I'm curious how it's done. A 'simple' example of what I'm asking about
would be a Google News page... no, not the search aspects of it, but
the
formatting of the page, and the placement of images and stories.
Just thought there might be some folks here who have some experience in
this area.
Well, by combining Applescript with shell commands you can automate any
of the jobs that you do manually.
Applescript coupled with a database and a template can produce many,
many pages.
This method (using FMP) is one of a million variations
Global fields store boilerplate code.
Normal fields store data.
Calculation fields transform the boilerplate into snippets of HTML code.
Export records as TAB delimited. TAB is treated as a single space in
HTML so many fields can be exported without problems.
Open the file in Applescript line by line. Spit the HTML code into
separate files and close.
or skip the export/read file steps and get the data directly from FMP
via applescript
or skip the local file system and dump straight to the web space via
curl
or skip the html processing and dump data files into your web space for
use by perl or PHP
