[Please use the mhonarc mailing list for mhonarc related questions]
On April 24, 1998 at 20:11, ravindra(_at_)enterprise(_dot_)net wrote:
It's just very unclear to me how to use the resources relating to
page markup. I understand the syntax, but where do you put them?
Most layout resources can be defined only in a resource file.
For each resource reference page, the Syntax section tells you
how a resource can be set (the format of the pages are described
in the "Resources" section of the documentation).
I
mean, say, if I want to use say, TOPLINKS, where would I put this?
In a resource file.
Somewhere in the .mhonarc.db file?
No. If you do not know Perl, do not even thing about messing
with .mhonarc.db. And if do, make sure you know what mhonarc
does with it.
In a resource file called with
M2H_RCFILE?
That is one way to specifiy the resource file. M2H_RCFILE is an
environment variable. Since it appears that you have read the RCFILE
page, -rcfile can also be used on the command-line. For example:
mhonarc -rcfile myrc.rc ...
And where in the file?
Anywhere. Did you look at the example given in the RCFILE page? Also,
there are example resource files in the examples directory of the
distribution.
Eg. Do I mix the TOPLINKS
html markup statements in with the other variables in an index
resource file that are really concerned with the index page markup
rather than individual message markup?
It is not required. Normally, all resources you want to define
for an archive can be specified in the same file.
If so do I have to redefine
them in every other index resource file as well, or just once in the
'top' file?
'top'?? You can check out the DEFRCFILE resource on specifying default
resources to use when you invoke mhonarc on any archive. Also, look at
the INCLUDE resource to have a resource file include other files.
It just seems to me that the one major defect in otherwise extremely
thorough documentation is that there is this almost unbridgable gap
between the detail of the resources file and the rest of the
documentation that leaves little or no clue as to exactly where
most of the resource variables have to be put in order to use them.
I agree that there is room for improvement. I definitely open to
document contributions that help explain how to use MHonArc. Since I
do the coding and documentation, I mostly concentrate on making sure
the documentation contains all the features of the program. Tutorial
and guide-type documentation is secondary (due to time). My personal
attempts in that area are the "Quick Start" section and the FAQ.
The mailing list has served as a good resource for getting answers to
questions that the docs and FAQ do not provide.
--ewh
----
Earl Hood | University of California: Irvine
ehood(_at_)medusa(_dot_)acs(_dot_)uci(_dot_)edu | Electronic
Loiterer
http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/ | Dabbler of SGML/WWW/Perl/MIME
