Monthly Archive Aug 2003

Monthly Archive Aug 2003

A Litte Reorganization

I moved the book-related pages into a new web. The online book pages were beginning to overwhelm the Random web, making other topics hard to find.

Even Neater Weather Thingus

Paul:Journal/WebHome has a much nicer-looking weather thingus than the PortlandWeather? page that I just added. Here's what it looks like for Vancouver Washington:

-- 31 Jul 2003

TWiki INCLUDE Directive

The INCLUDE directive is documented at IncludeTopicsAndWebPages. Here are the main ways to use it:

You can include one twiki topic within another. That's how I do the WebRss pages - the RSS feeds at this site and also most of the content at MonthlyDigest:

 % INCLUDE{"TWiki.WebRssBase"}%
 % INCLUDE{"Software.BeepProtocol"}% ... Software.BeepProtocol -- 25 Jul 2003

You can define what part of a twiki page will be included. You do this using the %STARTINCLUDE% and %STOPINCLUDE% directives on the included page.

When defining skin templates you can include one template within another, using the TMPL:INCLUDE directive:

 % TMPL:INCLUDE{"twiki.void"}%

Skin templates can also include a twiki topic as part of the skin output:

 % TMPL:DEF{"TopBar"}% % INCLUDE{"FlexibleSkinTopBar"}% %TMPL:END%

You can include an entire web page:

 % INCLUDE{"http://www.fvrl.org/events/index.cfm?listexpand=nav2053&buttontext=Book%20Sales"}%

You can include just part of a web page, by setting to/from patterns:

 % INCLUDE{"http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/wrhq/TotalForecast.csh?TotalForecast+Portland+WA+039"
   pattern="^.*?(<table BORDER=0.*?<td>=).*"}% </font></font></table></table>

If including a URL takes a long time it may be because of a buglet in the TWiki Net.pm module. Specifically, the URL request should contain connection:close in the HTTP header. This will force the connection to close rather than wait for it to timeout. At about line 60 change as follows:

   my $req = "GET $theUrl HTTP/1.1\r\n$theHeader\r\n\r\n";

   my $req = "GET $theUrl HTTP/1.1\r\n$theHeader\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n";

Thanks to Paul:Main/WebHome for pointing this out. See also TWiki:Codev/IncludeHTMLTakesLongTime.

... TWikiIncludeTricks -- 31 Jul 2003

The BEEP protocol is a lighter-weight protocol than HTTP, and can be used for nearly any kind of message pattern - it is not limited to the request/reply exchange. It has less byte overhead than HTTP, yet has a richer semantics (in some ways).

Overview of BEEP (Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol)

IETF framework
layered directly on top of TCP
built-in features include:
- initial handshake protocol
- authentication
- security
- error handling

... BeepProtocol -- 25 Jul 2003

... MozillaFirebird? -- 23 Jul 2003

b r a y d e n . o r g / Random

Monthly Archive Aug 2003

A Litte Reorganization

Even Neater Weather Thingus

TWiki INCLUDE Directive

A Patch to Net.pm

Overview of BEEP (Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol)