G Cows

G-Cows is a software project consisting in:
- definition of a scripting language designed for creation of web sites;
- interpreter for the scripting language (Cows);
- a makefile generator (Cows-mkgen).
 

Cows is the interpreter for the Cows scripting language, used to parse HTML files containing additional scripts. Its output is represented by a verbatim copy of text file with scripts replaced by their outputs. You can run Cows on every text file, but some functions are specific to web pages so - for the sake of simplicity - throughout this site we'll assume we are dealing with HTML files.

On Unix (and Unix-like) systems such as FreeBSD and Linux every tool can cooperate with other utilities on the system. This behavior results in an astonishing power, limited only by user's inventive. G-Cows has been created with this idea in mind, and gives the best results when used in conjunction with the Make utility.

Cows-mkgen is the program used to generate makefiles in order to provide an immediate way to realize this interaction.

Features:
- Complete scripting language supporting:
- recursive file inclusion;
- boolean, integer and string variables;
- automatic and explicit type conversion
- conditional expressions;
- while and for loops;
- arrays and foreach loops;
- functions returning file sizes and modify dates;
- functions performing link corrections;
- functions performing string operations (tokenizing, substitutions etc.)

- Strong interaction with your GNU/Linux system
- the Unix-like architecture consists in simple elements arrangeable in endless combinations: G-Cows takes advantage of this philosophy by integrating itself with your GNU/Linux system;
- the Cows interpreter is able to execute commands, scripts and programs written in every language whose interpreter or compiler is installed on your machine;
- Cows-mkgen generates makefiles allowing to handle complex dependencies among site elements.

- Built-in facility for handling multiple versions of a site from the same contents
- create an alternate, fully accessible version of you site for visually impaired users, slow modem connections and so on;
- create a printable version of each page;
- pages can be cross-linked to allow visitors to easily jump from one version to another.

- Built in facility for handling multilingual sites.
- you can gradually translate pages into other languages;
- pages without a translation will be displayed in the default language with, optionally, an additional message for the visitor. This way, you can simply translate a simple message like "Sorry, this page has not been translated yet; reverting to default language (English)" in as many languages you want. Then, you gradually translate pages: users will browse the site and translated pages will be displayed in their language, the others in site's default language.

Requirements:

· Linux:
· Fedora Core 4
· Fedora Core 5
· SUSE Linux 10.0
· Slackware 10.2
· FreeBSD
· FreeBSD 4.11
· FreeBSD 5.5-BETA4
· FreeBSD 6.0
· FreeBSD 6.1
· OpenBSD
· OpenBSD 3.8
· NetBSD
· NetBSD 3.0