LurkerXYZ said:
I want to understand about this from the standpoint of an end-user.
End-user defined here as a simpleton web-surfer, one without broadband.
I read pages at Pricelessware.org. And save pages. Importantly: I
download content/info from pricelessware.org, as a set of html pages.
Currently, everything is wysiwyg. All my software understands it.
Including even my default offline html renderer, OB1.
Databases on server? Things can become messy and complex for me, sometimes.
As is now, again, it's wysiwyg, when keeping a page. I am simply mirroring
a copy of a page, as it exists on server.
Actually that's not true - it just feels that way.
The Pricelessware
site has a lot of PHP web pages - the Program Index page, the PL2004
nominations page, the acf Program Information pages etc. etc.
Those web pages are created from two files - a .php file and a .txt
file. The .php files have some standard HTML coding and some
instructions/script that creates the tables on the web page. The .txt
file has the database (the contents of the table you see on the web page).
When you sort a table a new web page is created. When you save the page
it is a standard HTML file - it can't be sorted - but it looks the same
- feels the same. . .
The original URL and the original
page remote, they correspond. And all my software, even my lightest htm
readers, it's all in synch, and they all get along with priceleware.org
content.
When there is this complex server script stuff (that many of you understand,
and which I do not)...then I have sometimes problems copying pages from the
original site. It is online-oriented. Which I am not.
And at worst, that is occasionally intensely script-oriented. (I have lived
long and prospered by saying no to browser scripting.) That which can form
itself into a deal-breaker; death of it.
If you made this "database transition," will I have such problems? Will I
no longer have the ability to simply copy html files, with a static URL, to
my local drive -- in order to have this primary function of gaining all the
useful pricelessware information?
Some of you are sophisticated, and are thinking of maintenance issues, and
of implementation issues.
I am unsophisticated, and I am thinking about this in terms of my needs.
That is, what does this mean for me, if this new system? What can the
greatest majority of my software read; what will I be able to read and
comprehend; what can I save?
--?
signed, simpleton
If we stay with the PHP format we will have a WYSIWYG site - the change
to a single online database would not affect that. Pages might look the
same as they do now, they might look different - that's a different
story - but you would be able to save them as HTML - just as you do now.
I like PHP web pages - it looks like you do to.
Susan
