Articles for the next issue

The next issue is still under construction. To make the build process easier you can find it already in its final location:

../English/September2004/


Information for editors

Why do we use meta.shtml files?

The meta.shtml are very simple in structure and can easily be edited. It is much easier to read for humans. If we decide to changed the layout of the final articles then we don't need to change our meta.shtml files we just change the converted and re-run it.

Why .shtml and not .html?

The articles use server side includes (SSI). Some parts of the html code that you see in your browser is generated at run time, the moment you click on the article. The web server recognizes those files that have SSI commands inside by the name .shtml.

Why can I not download an articleXXX.shtml file via my html browser and translate it?

Well, because you don't get the same file as it is on the disk of the LinuxFocus server. The links to the other languages are e.g generated automatically and updated automatically. If you download the articleXXX.shtml file today then the article may be available in let's say 3 languages and the appropriate code is generated for these 3 languages. A week later when you are ready with the translation this may not be valid any longer. Now there might be articles available in 5 languages but your translation will never update it self. It is frozen.

meta.shtml is also a .shtml file. Why can I download it via my html browser?

The meta.shtml do not contain SSI commands. These files could also be called meta.html. We just named them meta.shtml to indicate that we will convert it to a articleXXX.shtml file.

I don't have a working perl installation to run lfparser

Get it working! For the moment you can download the articleXXX.shtml via ftp instead of http. Downloading them via ftp will leave the SSI commands unchanged and they will still be there after you have translated the article. This should however really be the exception. The articleXXX.shtml file is much more complicated and difficult to read. It is easy to mess it up. Try to use meta.shtml files for your translation work and then convert them using lfparser.

Converting meta.shtml to the final article

To convert a meta.shtml article to the final article you need lfparser which you can get from pepper.linuxfocus.org/~guido/dev/lfparser.html. Run lfparser -h to get information on how to use it.

Is there any further doumenation for editors?

Yes, have a look at the files in main.linuxfocus.org/doc,
the Editor's guide: editorsguide.html.