update April 2, 2008
NAME
htmldoc.py - Create BIRCH HTML documentation from BIRCH and local databases.
SYNOPSIS
python htmldoc.py

DESCRIPTION
All BIRCH documentation is organized into two databases, managed using ACeDB found in the following directories:
To provide a single, unified view of all documentation, htmldoc.py reads both databases and writes documentation pages to $BIRCH/public_html/birchdoc.  Documentation pages are written to three subdirectories: category, program and package.

category - this directory contains a main page  called category.html, and for each category, a page listing all programs in that category

package - this directory contains a main page called package.html, and for each package, a page listing all programs in that package, as well as documentation files pertaining to the package in general.

program - this directory contains a main page called program.html, and for each program, a page listing all documentation files for that program.

Each time htmldoc.py is run, these directories and their contents are completely deleted, and new directories and documentation files are generated from the database.

FILE NAMING CONVENTIONS
Each documentation file is represented in the database by a File object. For data objects of the type "File", the name of the data object is identical to the path of the file.  All file paths must begin with the name of a birch environment variable, which corresponds a birch directory:
For example, the file $doc/fsap/numseq.txt would be represented in birchdb as a file object with the name '$doc/fsap/numseq.txt'. When htmldoc.py creates a documentation page for the numseq program, it will include a hypertext link to this file. The prefix for the URL will be taken from the file $BIRCH/local/newstr.param. This file contains lines used by customdoc.py to construct URLs to BIRCH documentation. On the U. of Manitoba BIRCH site, the path to all BIRCH documentation is listed in this file as  'http\://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~psgendb'. The URL for $doc/fsap/numseq.txt would therefore be 'http\://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~psgendb/doc/fsap/numseq.txt'.The documentation for $local/doc/staden/manual_unix.pdf would be http\://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~psgendb/local/doc/staden/manual_unix.pdf'.

File names can also be URLs pointing to documentation anywhere on the Internet. In this case, the URL is also used for the hypertext link. For example, the file object for the NCBI Cn3D program is named 'http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/CN3D/cn3d.html", which is also the URL to that document.

In summary,  htmldoc.py creates URLs by either taking the full name of the File object, if it begins with 'http://' or 'file://', or if the name begins with '$', the '$' is replaced with the URL prefix for your BIRCH site.


HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS
  1.  For both databases, data objects Category, Package, Program and File are dumped to flat files named, respectively category.ace, package.ace, program.ace and file.ace.  If no local birchdb database exists, no files are generated for that database. This is done using the script tbirchd.sh, which runs the tace command for both databases, taking database commands from the file tace.input.
  2. For all data objects listed in 1, htmldoc.py reads the .ace files, first from the main birchdb database, and then from the local database.
  3. The prefix for all URLs created by htmldoc.py is read from the file $BIRCH/local/newstr.param.
  4. The category, package and program directories in $BIRCH/public_html/birchdoc are deleted and empty directories are created.
  5. New HTML files are written to these directories, as described above.


SEE ALSO
birchdb, lbirchdb, lgbirchdb
 
AUTHOR
Dr. Brian Fristensky
Department of Plant Science
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB  Canada R3T 2N2
frist@cc.umanitoba.ca
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~frist