2004-06-07 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.51.
• This is primarily a bug fix and/or compatability release.
• Renamed all demo/example modules besides the core 5 so that their names all start with 'Demo'. These demo/example modules all had/have top-level names, and after the change there should not be any name conflicts with other CPAN modules that should have the original top-level names. All references to these module names in other files were also updated.
• Moved the 5 'main' demo modules (which I actually use in production) into the 'lib' folder: "Demo[GuestBook|MailForm|Redirect|TextFile|Usage]". Now they are also test-compiled by CGI-Portable.t.
• Several documentation fixes or changes in CGI::Portable (now v0.51).
• Fixed a couple "\1 better written as $1" warnings in the search_and_replace_url_path_tokens() method of CGI::Portable.
• Removed unused "@ISA" global var declaration from DemoUsage (now v0.51).
• Since no one should be actually using the renamed demo modules, this release is completely backwards compatible.

2004-06-06 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.50.
• Updated this distribution's external dependencies on CGI::MultiValuedHash to v1.09. That module's API didn't change, but it had a bug fix.
• The 4 modules that CGI::Portable subclassed (::Errors, ::Files, ::Request, ::Response) in release 0.472 are now merged into it as of release 0.50. The result of this 5-way merge has a version of 0.50, and can be used identically to the old module. No new code or features were added. The new module has all of the old 5's documentation, slightly altered as was necessary for the merger. Due to the elimination of redundancies, the new module is 17% smaller than the combined size of the old 5. Every other module in this distribution was also updated to version 0.50, even though they otherwise had no changes (1 exception).
• Small feature update in CGI::Portable::AppMultiScreen whereby set_multi_screen_no_delegate_message() now spits out an 'http_status_code' of '404 Not Found' to go with the "screen doesn't exist" error page that it generates. It used to leave the default status code of '200 OK' to be returned, which is technically wrong even though the user sees the same thing. As a result of the change, web crawling robots such as search engines should record that an external link pointing to your "doesn't exist" page is broken, and they shouldn't index "doesn't exist" as if it were a valid page, sending more visitors straight to it later. This shouldn't break anything unless you depended on the old, broken behaviour.
• Note that if you referenced any of the 4 modules that don't exist by name, then just substitute 'CGI::Portable' for the old name and your code should continue to work as before.
• Besides the aforementioned, this release is completely backwards compatible with the previous one, so you should be able to swap it in without problems.
• Renamed t/CGI-Portable-Framework.t to t/CGI-Portable.t.

2003-03-21 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.472.
• The only change in this release was to fix t/CGI-Portable-Framework.t, where I had forgotten to declare (and set) a variable before using it. This omission had caused "make test" to completely fail.

2003-03-16 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.471.
• This is a small maintenance release that is mainly for improving documentation. Similar maintenance releases are being done with all of my distributions simultaneously. A lot of it was formatting issues that were easy to miss before; the other bullet points below list the non-formatting issues. These files had formatting fixes: Portable.pm, Request.pm, Response.pm, AdapterCGI.pm, AppMultiScreen.pm, ChangeLog, ReadMe.
• The distribution file layouts have also been standardized. Modules were already in a "lib" folder so no change was needed there. Tests were put in a "t" folder. "test.pl" was changed to "t/CGI-Portable-Framework.t".
• Updated all Copyright statements to a better (and longer) version, which is dated 1999-2003. Your rights to use these modules haven't changed, but they may now be easier to understand. These statements appear once in the ReadMe file at the bottom (under "AUTHOR"), and twice in each module (.pm file), a full version at the bottom (under "AUTHOR") and a shorter version at the top (in code comments).
• Added the "use warnings" pragma at the top of all files beside "use strict"; every occurance of "use strict" gained a "use warnings" whether it was in the module proper or in its test script or in its SYNOPSIS. This should save users from having to put -w on the command line for them.
• Incremented all module $VERSION numbers by 0.001, and all test scripts to require the new versions. Also, where any of my modules use others of my modules, they now require the latest version as of this writing, for simplicity of maintenance.
• Updated all test scripts to read $verbose from @ARGV (command line arguments), and other test script improvements.
• Updated these sections of the ReadMe file: REQUIREMENTS, INSTALLATION.

2001-11-04 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.47.
• Updated CGI::Portable::Request so that it now stores all raw http request details, rather than just some of them. To implement this, two properties named "request head" and "request body" were added; the first is a hash and the second is a scalar. Their format and accessor methods are designed to mirror those for the "http head" and "http body" in Response. Therefore, 5 new accessor methods were added: get_request_headers_ref(), [get/set/add]requestheaders(), request_body(). The older methods referer() and user_agent() have been re-implemented to retrieve and set certain key/value pairs in "request head" rather than have their own properties, which were deleted. Many property accessor groups, other functions, and their POD were rearranged into a more logical order, starting with raw connection and request details, then parsed user input, then functions for making new call-back urls. Despite this, no existing code was changed, so all the existing functions work the same as before. This Request version 0.47 should be backwards-compatible with version 0.46. Much of the overview POD was rewritten to be easier to understand, so you should have a better idea what the features represent. Note that all "user path/query/post/cookies" properties are parsed copies of various "request" properties, which are the raw versions; both can be stored to give you maximum flexability.
• The two demo modules named DemoStatic and DemoSegTextDoc have been merged into a single module named DemoTextFile, at version 0.47. Any of your scripts that used DemoStatic can use DemoTextFile with no changes besides the name of the module called. Scripts that use DemoSegTextDoc will need to, in addition to the rename, pass an extra preference of "is_text => 1" in order to replicate the old behaviour. The new module is more flexible than its predecessors by letting you have multi-part documents that are either plain text or html (not plain text only). In addition, extra title and creator and date information is only displayed if the preference "title" has a value, so you can have multi-part documents without extra headers now. Any demos have been updated where necessary to the new module name.
• No other files were changed, and are still at version 0.46.

2001-09-30 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.46.
• IMPORTANT: Rewrote the take_context_output() methods in all CGI::Portable::* modules that had them: Errors, Files, Request, Response, suffixless. Be aware that the changed methods have a different default behaviour than before, as well as that they take a different argument set. You should check any of your code which calls this method, because it may very well break if it used any arguments or depended on specific behaviour. Specifically, the new arguments [CONTEXT, LEAVE_SCALARS, REPLACE_LISTS] replace the old arguments [CONTEXT, APPEND_LISTS, SKIP_SCALARS]. The new default behaviours regarding when CONTEXT properties overwrite SELF properties have been changed so that they more closely match what one would intuitively expect to happen. No longer will null properties overwrite properties with values. Also, lists are now combined by default rather than replaced, which works well when you have multiple "application components" subcontracted to make different regions of the same screens; previously, the last component would overwrite earlier ones by default. Scalar properties in "taken" CONTEXTs still will overwrite ones in SELF by default, but this time only if they aren't null. See the method's own POD for more.
• Added method page_search_and_replace() to CGI::Portable::Response, which replaces the search_and_replace_page_body() method in CGI::Portable; the latter was deleted. Correspondingly, the deprecated preference named "page_replace" that was handled by CGI::Portable::AppStatic has been renamed to "page_search_and_replace". The renamed preference works the same as before, and should be permanent. Also, added property and method page_prologue() to Response and a corresponding "low/high_page_prologue" properties to AppStatic. The new method and properties have no effect unless your HTML::EasyTags install is 1-06 or later.
• Added module CGI::Portable::AppMultiScreen, an "application component" that lets you easily define a group of screens that are related, delegate the construction of each screen to separate "components", and simplify the creation of links between the screens. The module is subclassed from AppStatic. This module has complete POD so you can get a good description by reading that documentation. This module is meant as a non-proprietary replacement for DemoMultiPage; the latter module was deleted. The preferences handled by DemoMultiPage were renamed as follows: "vrp_handlers" to "delegate_list", "def_handler" to "default_delegate", "wpm_module" to "module_name", "wpm_prefs" to "preferences", "wpm_subdir" to "file_subdir". The new module does not have any replacement for the older "menu_items" and related preferences for generating html menus of hyperlinks between the various screens, and it will not get any due to the proprietary nature of such a task. If you used "menu_items" before then you will need to make the hyperlinks yourself and attach them to the pages. It really isn't that difficult; see the "website" demo for an example of how to do it now.
• Added module CGI::Portable::AppSplitScreen, an "application component" that lets you easily divide a response screen into multiple regions and then delegate the construction of each region to separate "components". You define the regions within the standard "preferences", and no other input is required. The module is subclassed from AppStatic. This module has complete POD so you can get a good description by reading that documentation. Before this module became available, you would have had to do your own programming for such simple tasks as adding page headers or footers that are stored in a different file of their own; now such activities can be done with nothing more than ordinary config files.
• Updated CGI::Portable::AdapterCGI so that it will always read posted data up to Content-length bytes. While it never got more than that before, it had also refused to read content if there was more than 100K of it. This change brings more behaviour partity with AdapterSocket.
• Small update to the search_and_replace_url_path_tokens() method of CGI::Portable so that it didn't leave a trailing "?" on urls when there was no query string.
• Various small updates were made to the demo modules to keep them up to date with the main module changes, above, so they don't break.
• Various small updates were made so that the output of the modules is better compliant with XHTML. All HTML now has lowercased tags, among other things. However, it should continue to work with older web browsers.

2001-08-26 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.45.
• In summary, this release adds a new module, CGI::Portable::AppStatic, removes a now-redundant existing one, CGI::WPM::Base, adds some methods to other modules (mostly Response), deletes a few methods (mostly Request), renames a number of methods (about 10% of Request), and renames the main demo modules (all CGI::WPM:: became Demo). These changes were done to further streamline the modules, and prepare for large feature additions in subsequent releases. Some of your code may break due to the changes, but a simple search-and-replace should be all that's necessary to fix it.
• All files had versions changed to 0.45 whether changes were made or not.
• Updated CGI::Portable::Request to delete the following 3 methods along with their associated properties: url_path_is_in_path_info(), url_path_is_in_query(), url_path_query_param_name(). There were related simplifications made to the module set such that it is expected that the "user path" or "url path" are always stored as the "path info"; the option to store it as a "query string" argument instead has been removed. You should not need to change your code to reflect the above change, as the public interface of the url-making methods were not changed. However, you probably want to reset your app if you used the query string store because any web screens currently served would then have invalid hyperlinks in them.
• Renamed several methods that store request details: virtual_host() became server_domain(), remote_addr() became client_ip(), remote_host() became client_domain(). These methods were added: server_ip(), client_port(). To round out the six-method set, server_port() was kept unchanged from before. Also, the methods request_uri() and request_protocol() were added to complement request_method(), which remained as before; the script_name() method was removed since it became partially redundant with request_path(). Accordingly, CGI::Portable::Request, CGI::Portable::AdapterSocket, CGI::Portable::AdapterCGI, and all "CGI::WPM::*" modules were updated.
• Updated CGI::Portable::Response by adding these methods: set_http_cookies(), add_http_headers(), add_page_meta(), add_page_style_sources(), add_page_style_code(), add_page_frameset_attributes(), add_page_body_attributes(). The delete_http_cookies() method was deleted, but its effect can be simulated by calling set_http_cookies() with an empty array ref argument.
• Added module CGI::Portable::AppStatic, an "application component" that lets you define whole response screens within a config file. This module is meant as a non-proprietary replacement for CGI::WPM::Base; the latter module was deleted. The preferences handled by CGI::WPM::Base were renamed as follows: "http_target" to "low_http_window_target", "page_body" to "high_page_body", "page_header" to "prepend_page_body", "page_footer" to "append_page_body", "page_title" to "low_page_title", "page_author" to "low_page_author", "page_meta" to "add_page_meta", "page_css_src" to "add_page_style_sources", "page_css_code" to "add_page_style_code", "page_body_attr" to "add_page_body_attributes". Any modules that used CGI::WPM::Base have been updated to use CGI::Portable::AppStatic instead; the exception is CGI::WPM::Usage, which now uses neither of them. The new module does not yet have an elegant replacement for the older "page_replace" property, so it continues to support that property as a deprecated feature.
• Renamed all "CGI::WPM::" modules to "Demo" since they truly belong with the demos. If you use any of these then you will need to search-and-replace any calls to the module name. They otherwise work the same way as before.
• Removed support of the "amend_msg" preference from all "Demo*" modules. This preference had allowed one to customize the text for a portion of most error screens, so that portion is no longer customizable.
• Removed support of the "url" preference in the DemoRedirect module. This preference had allowed DemoRedirect to always use the same target url, rather than getting it from the query string parameter named "url". Now, the query string is the only place that DemoRedirect looks. However, you can now use CGI::Portable::AppStatic directly (and not use DemoRedirect) to replace the lost functionality. Then, you set the high_http_status_code preference to "301 Moved" and "high_http_redirect_url" to the destination.
• Updated CGI::Portable and many of the demo modules to make them more XHTML-compliant. Specifically, all main screen headers are now '<H1></H1>' rather than '<H2 ALIGN="center"></H2>'. Users who want their headings to appear a specific way, like centered, should use a stylesheet to say so.

2001-06-11 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.44.
• This release does not update any of the core modules having "CGI::Portable" in their names. It focuses on updates for the other modules instead.
• CGI::WPM::Usage and CGI::WPM::CountFile have been merged into a single module, keeping the name CGI::WPM::Usage. This mainly consisted of copying about 6K of code into Usage and deleting the rest of CountFile entirely. CGI::WPM::Usage was further edited so that the new code integrated cleanly. The deleted module didn't really belong in the CGI::WPM:: name space, but was put there to get it out of the way of the generic name spaces, and because Usage depended on it. So there are now 8 CGI::WPM:: modules down from 9, and all of the remaining belong together.
• All CGI::WPM::* modules have been updated to version 0.44. Most of the modules have had only minor tweaks that consist of renaming a few private methods (any leading "_" was removed for consistency). They should all work the same as they did before.
• The ReadMe file was updated in several places, and there were other minor documentation updates.
• Added demo SmartHouse - A Web-based X10 Device Controller in Perl. This demo is based on a college lab assignment. It doesn't actually control any hardware, but is a simple web interface for such a program should one want to extend it in that manner. This is meant to show how CGI::Portable can be used in a wide variety of environments, not just ordinary database or web sites. If you wanted to extend it then you should use modules like ControlX10::CM17, ControlX10::CM11, or Device::SerialPort. On the other hand, if you want a very complete (and complicated) Perl solution then you can download Bruce Winter's free open-source MisterHouse instead at "http://www.misterhouse.net".

2001-06-05 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.43.
• CGI::Portable has been split into 5 modules, all of which are at version 0.43. The four new ones are [CGI::Portable::Errors, CGI::Portable::Files, CGI::Portable::Request, CGI::Portable::Response] and these handle most of the core functionality from the larger module before it. The new CGI::Portable module is a subclass of the above four and adds the remaining functionality itself; you can still use CGI::Portable as you did before. The split of functionality is to emphasize that CGI::Portable is doing several tasks in parallel that are related but distinct, so you can now use each of them independently and not carry around the weight of others that you don't use. Each module has the POD for all methods it implements.
• The module CGI::WPM::SimpleUserIO has been rewritten and renamed to CGI::Portable::AdapterCGI. The new module has the same primary purpose but a simplified interface. The two methods which took CGI::Portable objects as arguments have been renamed to fetch_user_input() and send_user_output(). All of the other methods were removed except the send_quick_*() ones. Unlike before, it is fetch_user_input() that does the actual data gathering, whereas before it had to be done earlier with a separate method like new(). Unlike before, AdapterCGI sends all "http " properties, including cookies. You will need to make slight changes to any "config shell" code that used the old module in order to stay compatible. All of the demo scripts and the Synopsis POD in the CGI::WPM:: modules have been updated for the new version.
• Added module CGI::Portable::AdapterSocket which is like AdapterCGI except that it talks to an IO::Socket::INET object instead of a CGI environment, so the means is now provided for you to skip web servers altogether if you just need a lightweight Perl-only server. There is also a new demo script named startup_socket.pl which complements startup_cgi.pl in which they do the exact same thing (animals demo) but under different servers. However, this Sockets demo is fairly lightweight and doesn't have things like threading that the big servers do, so you would want to improve on it if you are operating in a heavy-use environment.
• The "http cookies" property and associated methods that are now in CGI::Portable::Response have been greatly simplified so that they are easier to use and to eliminate external dependencies. While the property is still an array, each element is now a scalar instead of a MultiValuedHash object. It is assumed that users would encode cookies ahead of time and just insert them as strings; that is, the Adapter modules will send them literally. These methods have been removed: get_http_cookie_refs(), get_http_cookie(), get_http_cookie_ref(). The method get_http_cookies_ref() has been added to replace the first one, and it returns a reference to the whole list. These methods continue to work as they did before: get_http_cookies(), add_http_cookies(), delete_http_cookies().
• Added 8 new scalar properties to CGI::Portable::Request which hold extra miscellaneous HTTP request details: [request_method(), virtual_host(), server_port(), script_name(), referer(), user_agent(), remote_addr(), remote_host()]. AdapterCGI has been updated to feed them as well. Related to this change, [CGI::WPM::Usage, MailForm, GuestBook] have been updated to use these properties rather than looking in %ENV themselves, which wouldn't work if they were running in a non-CGI environment.
• Updated CGI::WPM::Usage to lowercase all search engine keywords, and to do case-insensitive matching when determining search engine domains. The latter would be considered a bug fixed since other domain checks were c-i.
• Some demo modules now require version 2.01 of HTML::FormTemplate since that version has some bug fixes.

2001-05-08 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.42.
• Added a demo called "image" to show that, yes, CGI::Portable can store and output any type of file, not just HTML, but pictures and other binary types too. Contrary to some critics' statements, just because I don't use all the features that my modules provide in my own websites doesn't mean they aren't there. This demo script will generate an html page with text and an image, both of which are generated by the same script. This script requires the GD library to work so you'll need to have it installed to see the picture.
• Added explicit support for the "Window-Target" http header to CGI::Portable, CGI::WebUserIO, and CGI::WPM::Base, which is needed for multiple frame pages where each screen can determine for itself what frame or window it goes into (meaning no messy target attributes in hyperlinks). To implement this, a new property was added to CGI::Portable with the accessor method http_window_target(). CGI::WPM::Base handles an additional preference named "http_target" which lets you set the new property. All three of the above modules were raised to version 0.42 from 0.41. Also, the "website" demo was updated to use this new ability by putting redirected links in a different window; that "website" change is also in the Synopsis POD for CGI::WPM::MultiPage, which is at version 0.4101.
• Added explicit support for building HTML frameset pages to CGI::Portable in the form of two new properties with the accessor methods like page_frameset_attributes() and page_frameset(). These respectively hold properties for the opening <FRAMESET> tag and the list of <FRAME> tags. Also, a new "frameset" demo was added to show how one could use a single script to implement a frameset and all member frames. This demo has 4.
• To help implement the frameset feature, this distribution now requires version 1.05 of HTML::EasyTags, which had frameset support added to it.
• Fixed a bug in CGI::WPM::WebUserIO where redirection headers didn't work properly under mod_perl. In fact, this led to a complete rewrite of the methods relating to sending output. The methods make_http_headers() and send_user_output() were dropped entirely. These methods were added instead: send_quick_html_response(), send_quick_redirect_response(). The method send_user_output_from_cgi_portable() still exists and does everything it did before. It also outputs miscellaneous http headers now, but it still doesn't do anything with cookies yet. In the future this will be addressed. Since the last method is the only one I actually used in my demos or Synopsis, I figure that these changes are okay. I also added the method server_is_mod_perl() which returns true if we're running under mod_perl.
• As a result of the above changes, HTTP::Headers is no longer used by any of my modules, so the requirements are now simplified.

2001-05-04 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.41.
• This release is the first one following successful registrations with "The Perl 5 Module List". The updated entry would look like this:

CGI::
::Portable adpO Framework for server-agnostic web apps DUNCAND

• This is the first release of CGI::Portable, which has been renamed from HTML::Application. There are several changes to the module itself. This release also includes all of my CGI::WPM::* modules, which have not been renamed, to serve as demonstrations of CGI::Portable in use. Their code has been updated a bit. Similarly, this distribution has been renamed to CGI-Portable from HTML-Application and duncand-prerelease.
• This distribution now has a "demos" folder containing 40 files and folders which are ready-to-use example scripts and data files that exercise CGI::Portable and all of the CGI::WPM::* modules. Many of these are exactly the same as the new Synopsis POD for particular modules. Some have minor adjustments or demonstrate the Synopsis examples that make use of the most features of the particular modules. Many demos have extra files in them that never appeared in Synopsis. It is my hope that these demos will make it an order of magnitude easier for you to adopt my modules and put them to work in a productive manner. The provided demos include: a multi-page web site with usage tracking, guest books, mail and survey forms, static html and plain text pages, segmented text file display, redirection, and a few other strange modules that don't do anything useful but play with features.
• All of the CGI::WPM::* modules except CountFile had their POD updated, most notably with their Synopsis section. The new Synopsis should each be complete working programs now, although some of the other data files they call on may not exist unless you make them.
• All modules in this distribution are at version 0.41 whether or not there was any functionality change.
• Updated these methods of CGI::Portable to permit more descriptive error messages: resolve_prefs_node_to_array(), resolve_prefs_node_to_hash(). Previously these methods always reported a nonexistant file or directory (whatever is in $!) even if the file did exist but had a different problem. The new versions will distinguish a successful runtime that returns something other than a hash/array ref, and will distinguish an existing file that just doesn't compile or has a runtime error.
• Updated methods add_virtual_filename_error(), add_physical_filename_error() to support custom reason strings for file-related errors as an extra method argument. Previously the "reason" was always the content of $!.
• Modified method call_component() so that it now makes error screens itself upon error conditions that it discovers, including failure of the component to compile or run, or previously unhandled errors, probably related to prefs. As a result, the calling structure of this method is simplified; you simply take_context_output() and/or send the output as you usually do, without needing extra code to report error conditions. (You can still make a custom error screen if you want.) The second argument to call_component() was also removed, and the method will now always make an error screen and return if there is an unresolved error message. Likewise to the simplified calling code, the called component doesn't need code to make an error screen for problems occuring prior to its invocation, and is thereby simplified.
• Added method search_and_replace_url_path_tokens() to CGI::Portable that handles a special kind of search and replace that search_and_replace_page_body() can't handle, since it deals with processing and replacing text near the token being searched for rather than just the token itself. This method makes it easier to embed dynamic self-referencing urls inside static screen content files used by your app.
• Added seven new methods to CGI::Portable which handle a special set of "global preferences", each of which gets its own accessor method, which can be set once and used all over your program. They are: default_application_title(), default_maintainer_name(), default_maintainer_email_address(), default_maintainer_email_screen_url_path(), default_smtp_host(), default_smtp_timeout(), maintainer_email_html(). The updated call_component() uses this information in its error screens, and the various CGI::WPM::* modules use it in many places as well. During release 0.4, this global info was passed using the miscellaneous objects property, which was a rather user-unfriendly means in comparison; scripts written to use release 0.4 will have to be updated accordingly.
• CGI::Portable received several updates to its pod besides the appropriate method updates, most notably in the Name, Synopsis, Description, Similar Modules, A Different Overview.
• Added a couple methods to CGI::WPM::SimpleUserIO which will considerably reduce the size of your config shell if you use them: the method give_user_input_to_cgi_portable() will take a CGI::Portable object and feed it all the user input possible at once; the method send_user_output_from_cgi_portable() will likewise take a CGI::Portable object and send its output to the user all at once.
• CGI::WPM::Base has been reduced to half its size as all but these 3 methods were removed: main(), main_dispatch(), getamendment_message(). The code to check for pre-existing logged error conditions was also removed.
• Updated CGI::WPM::GuestBook in the following ways: 1. The private method get_question_field_defs() had a lot of redundant code removed, reducing the method to half its previous size; for one thing, it makes use of CGI::Portable's resolve_prefs_node_to_array() method now instead of doing a poorer job of it manually. 2. Added preference "sign_by_default" which allows you to choose whether the signing or reading mode is the default when one isn't specified. 3. Added self-referencing links in the signing mode that takes one to the reading mode; the reverse had already existed; so now the module has built-in links between all of its modes. 4. Added preference "msg_list_show_email" which if true will display the email addresses of book signers in the reading mode; the default of not showing the emails is what always happened before, even though they were stored in the message file. 5. Minor update to the screen showing a successful message was just posted where the recipient's email is now shown. 6. Updated the functionality relating to the simplified Boulder data files (used to be called SequentialFile by me) where nonexistant files are only created if they are for storing messages; they are now not created when they were supposed to hold field definitions, since this is an error.
• Updated CGI::WPM::MailForm in the same ways as #s 1, 5, 6 of GuestBook; regarding #6, MailForm would only ever read from such files anyway.
• Updated CGI::WPM::Usage in the following ways: 1. Removed preference 'use_def_engines'; it no longer applies because there is no longer any list of search engines built into the module. To attempt such a thing here is an impossible task considering how many there are and people's varying opinions on what should be grouped there. So now if you want search engine differentiation in referrer listings then you can provide a complete list yourself via the already existing 'search_engines' preference. 2. Removed preference 'site_urls' since it had existed to make a big deal of something that is better automated and not worried about anyway. From now on, a referring url is said to be self-referencing if its base portion matches the return value of CGI::Portable's base_url() method. While a few self urls will undoubtedly end up in the normal referrer list, the majority will be caught, and the ones slipping through are easy to identify in the list. 3. As a result of these changes, CGI::WPM::Usage is now a tenth smaller.

2001-04-23 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• duncand-prerelease 0.4, the last version of any distribution, prior to this one, to include the CGI::WPM::* modules, was released.

2001-04-23 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.4.
• This is the second release of HTML::Application as a distinct module. It follows more extensive usability testing which resulted in a few added features and bug fixes. As a result of the new testing, this module is being moved to beta status from alpha.
• Fixed SYNOPSIS POD in "Aardvark" module relating to the $inner context; some methods are now called following make_new_context() instead of before.
• Fixed bug in private method makean_url(), which is used by url_as_string() and recall_url(), where query parameters were not being replicated when url_path_is_in_path_info() was true; now they are.
• Fixed design flaw in make_new_context() where it had been calling initialize() to give default values to the new object before copying over the non default ones; now initialize() is not called and all object properties are either set or copied explicitely. The flaw being fixed relates to unpleasantries when a subclass overrides the initialize() method.
• Added new method take_context_output() which is designed to complement make_new_context(). This new method copies output values from the new context back to the parent object.
• Added new utility method search_and_replace_page_body() which takes a hash of tokens (or regexps) to search for in the html page body and text to replace them with; this method implements search-and-replace functionality.
• This module has become 5K larger including documentation.

2001-04-20 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Release 0.38.
• This release is the first one anticipating official registrations with "The Perl 5 Module List". The updated entry would look like this:

HTML::
::Application adpO Framework for complex portable web apps DUNCAND

• This release contains the first appearance of my HTML::Application module. Its code is derived from several related modules which had been constantly renamed, split, and combined since their first CPAN release in 2000-07-23. The most recent temporary names for these were "CGI::WPM::Globals", "CGI::WPM::PageMaker" and "CGI::WPM::WebUserIO". They were previously released as parts of the following distributions:
  • "libdwg": v1.0 r2000-07-23, v1.11 r2000-08-23
  • "CGI-FormGenerator": v0.9 r2000-09-04, v0.9201 r2000-12-26
  • "CGI-WebsiteGenerator": v0.3 r2000-09-04, v0.36 r2001-04-10
  • "duncand-prerelease": v0.37 r2001-04-12
• This module requires Perl version 5.004.
• It also requires File::VirtualPath 1.0, HTML::EasyTags 1.04, Data::MultiValuedhash 1.07, and CGI::MultiValuedHash 1.07. I consider the first three modules to be stable and well tested, as well as unlikely to change. The fourth module is partially tested, but production use of the other functionality finds it to be working properly.
• This release comes with the CPAN standard files "Makefile.PL", "test.pl", and "MANIFEST", which were all created since the previous release.
• Note that "test.pl" is incomplete; it only tests that this module will compile but not that the methods work; it is included so that people can use the Makefile in the standard way during installation. This file will be fleshed out when I have the chance.

2001-04-12 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• duncand-prerelease 0.37, the last version of any distribution to include CGI::WPM::Globals, was released.

2000-07-23 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• libdwg 1.0, the first version of any distribution to include CGI::WPM::Globals and other CGI::WPM::* modules, was released on CPAN.

2000-05-15 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Completed primary development on these modules, but POD mostly nonexistant.

2000-03-07 Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

• Began development on the final versions of these modules.
• Module based on a template created by h2xs 1.18.

1999-07 thru 1999-12

• Worked on second prototype of code that ended up in these modules. The effects of this development, as far as this distribution's own modules go, were mostly confined to CGI::Portable.
• As a separate but parallel project, I also implemented a complete and generic Threaded Discussion Board object using some of my low level modules and CGI.pm. This board is possibly still in use today in a corporate Intranet site.

1999-02 thru 1999-05

• Created first prototypes of code that ended up in these modules and used in a production environment for a year to generate my web sites. Many present-day features were present at that time, including static pages, segmented text pages, e-mail forms and guest books with unlimited questions (but were text only), redirection, and usage tracking. The implementation was just a hell of a lot uglier. These modules also used CGI.pm to do some things that have since become implemented by my own more focused modules: HTML::FormTemplate, HTML::EasyTags, Data::MultiValuedHash, CGI::MultiValuedHash, CGI::Portable, CGI::Portable::Request, CGI::Portable::AdapterCGI.