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From: pschleck@gonix.gonix.com (Paul W Schleck KD3FU)
Message-Id: <9510221600.AA17411@gonix.gonix.com>
Subject: auto-faq User Tips #2
To: auto-faq-users@oasis.novia.net
Date: Sun, 22 Oct 1995 11:00:34 -0500 (CDT)
Reply-To: auto-faq-maint@oasis.novia.net
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I was going to wait until my subscription to faq-maintainers
@consensus.com had finally been established before sending this, but I'm
having severe and ongoing problems subscribing to that list,
specifically SMTP 451 bounces (reply: read error) when sending to
faq-maintainers-request. Ping Huang has been supportive in working me
through this problem, but he's as dumfounded as I am. In the meantime,
I'll just Bcc: this one to faq-maintainers-announce@mit.edu.
This is the auto-faq User Tips bulletin #2. The User Tips will be an
occasional, maybe once every few months, bulletin of subtle hints and
tricks (as well as bug reports and version updates) for the auto-faq FAQ
management and posting package. It will be posted to
auto-faq-users@novia.net and faq-maintainers@consensus.com.
Back Issues
-----------
I'm going to make back issues of the User Tips available from the
auto-faq WWW Page:
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/
anonymous FTP site:
ftp://ftp.novia.net/customers/pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/
and ftpmail server:
Send a mail message to ftpmail@ftp.novia.net with the following commands
in the message body:
open
uuencode
get /customers/pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/1
get /customers/pschleck/auto-faq/user-tips/2
etc...
Watch for this to happen "soon" (i.e., since I'm going to set up the
archive *after* I mail this message, don't be surprised if it isn't
there right away :-).
Perl 5.001 Compatible Version
-----------------------------
This is the news that many of you have been waiting for. Having finally
gotten Perl 5 installed at Novia. I discovered that there were actually
a few incompatibilities between auto-faq 3.2pl1 (and presumably all
earlier versions) and Perl 5. Fortunately, they were all minor and
mainly consisted of the following two problems:
- The '@' character now being a metacharacter in strings, and requiring
a backslash to use it in a literal context.
- Precedence problems with calls to "open" without putting the
parameters in parentheses.
- Ian's last version, 3.2, also had a bug in the form of incorrect
parameters to a certain call to open() that Perl 4.036 blissfully
ignores, but Perl 5 will report as an error. (Interestingly enough,
Perl 4.019 also found the error, which is what I was using at my site
a few years ago). This was fixed in 3.2pl1.
The fixes to the above problems resulted in a new version of auto-faq,
3.3 Alpha, that is compatible both with Perl 4.036 and 5.001 (I haven't
tested against any other versions as these are the latest versions in
both major revision sequences, and it is strongly recommended that your
site upgrade to one of them. You can verify what version of perl your
site is running by typing "perl -v").
I've already gotten two reports of sites that are running Perl 5 and
could use a compatible version of auto-faq (One kind soul actually
submitted patches to me, albeit *after* I made the changes myself :-).
What I would like to do at this point is upgrade it to Beta and give it
out to any interested expert user who wishes to have a Perl 5-compatible
version of auto-faq and is willing to test and evaluate it.
I'm not yet going to upgrade it to a standard version as there are still
some changes in the works that I'd like to apply before shutting down
development on the 3.x major revision branch of auto-faq. These changes
include:
- adding a @seq_num()@ dynamic macro to provide a one-up sequence number
that can be incorporated into any appropriate news header
- overhauling the Configure script (built by dist-3.0), including
improvements in how it finds a working copy of inews, and providing
options to report to me what version you are using and subscribing to
the auto-faq-users mailing list
The former is all but implemented in 3.3 Alpha (I could use some
feedback on its use, however). The latter will take a month or two,
both due to demands on my time and the time of the individual who has
agreed to help me with dist-3.0. Watch for this to happen by late
December/early January.
Please contact me at auto-faq-maint@novia.net if you wish to participate
in 3.3 beta testing.
Configuring Dynamic Header Contents with "macros"
-------------------------------------------------
A powerful new capability of auto-faq 3.x is the addition of so-called
"macros" that provide even further customization of the news headers in
your FAQ article(s). This additional capability is a strong argument
for using a tool like auto-faq vs. more static approaches such as using
inews directly or even post_faq.pl, which only updates the Supersedes
and Expires headers. Also, if you are using auto-faq 2.4, this might be
a good reason to consider upgrading to 3.2pl1 or 3.3 Beta.
The macros that are available with auto-faq 3.2pl1 include:
@date()@
Print the date in various formats depending on the parameter in the ().
@posted_header()@
Print the contents of the header name passes as a parameter in the ().
This macro is only set after the articles are actually posted, so it is
useful only for logging purposes (auto-faq actually uses this macro
internally for its status files).
@<config-file-attribute>@
Print the contents of any named attribute in the faq-config file, such as:
@chgctrl-cmd@
@title@
@followup@
Examples:
Specifying the title in the faq-config file as:
title="foo.bar Frequently-Asked Questions @date(D)@
prints a Subject line with a mm/dd/yy format date in it, for example:
Subject: foo.bar Frequently-Asked Questions 10/22/95
Similarly, an expires-format of:
expires-format="@date(d)@ @date(b)@ @date(y)@ @date(T)@"
prints an INN-compatible Expires header like the following:
Expires: 23 Oct 95 15:17:02
The format parameters for date are identical to the SysV Unix "date"
command format letters (although some more obscure ones are not
supported).
A new macro for 3.3 Beta is:
@seq_num()@
Which provides a one-up sequence number offset by the number in the ().
If you've already been posting an article that is up to sequence number
758, for example, simply specify a title such as:
title="foo.bar Reader Bulletin #@seq_num(759)"
and the subject will evaluate to:
title="foo.bar Reader Bulletin #759"
then on subsequent postings, #760, #761, and so on.
If you are starting from scratch, simply use @seq_num(1)@.
For more information about auto-faq macros, consult the manual,
available in the README file in the auto-faq distribution, or via
anonymous FTP from:
ftp://ftp.novia.net/customers/pschleck/auto-faq/README
Coming up in a future auto-faq User Tips:
-----------------------------------------
- Further updates on auto-faq 3.3.
- Even further header customization of auto-faq using user-supplied
extension functions written in Perl that can be evaluated by auto-faq
without modifying the script itself (another powerful capability of
auto-faq 3.x).
- Design ideas for auto-faq 4.0, scheduled to begin development sometime
in the Summer of 1996, and opportunities for users to submit feedback.
--
Paul W. Schleck
auto-faq-maint@novia.net
auto-faq Maintainer