             FRAMEWORK FOR PORTABLE WEB APPLICATIONS
----------------------------------------------------------------------

by Darren Duncan <perl@DarrenDuncan.net>

CONTENTS

* Preface
* Keeping Up To Date
* Requirements
* Installation
* Support
* To Do
* Author

PREFACE

This distribution features the Perl 5 module named "CGI::Portable" as well as 
6 other modules that are required by it: [CGI::Portable::Errors, Files, Request, 
Response, AdapterCGI, AdapterSocket].  That is, the first 4 are subclassed by 
CGI::Portable, and the last 2 are recommended for use but not required.

All of my modules have complete POD inside of them, so please refer to that for a
description of the module itself.

This Read Me document concerns itself mainly with installation and support
issues, and also includes any "To Do" lists.

This distribution also includes 8 other modules, in the temporary name space 
CGI::WPM::*, that are designed to be used with CGI::Portable.  Each of these is 
included as a demo "application component", and by looking at them, you should 
have a better idea what CGI::Portable can do for you.  Unlike ordinary demos, 
however, these are a lot more mature and are being used effectively in multiple 
production environments.  For all intents and purposes, you should treat them 
like "scripts" rather than "modules" as far as when you use them, due to their 
more proprietary nature.

This distribution now has a "demos" folder containing 52 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.  
Any actual modules in the demos folder are very immature and should not be used 
as is; rather, learn from them.  They intentionally have no POD.

KEEPING UP TO DATE

My module set is constantly under development.  You should be able to find the
newest versions at my website, "http://www.DarrenDuncan.net", on the page called
"Perl Libraries I Made" (name subject to change).  They can also be found on CPAN
under the author name of "DUNCAND".  

I am inclined to update the copies on my web site more often, but those
intermediate versions are more likely to have been tested less, and the modules
may be updated day by day without increasing the version numbers.  However, the
copies on CPAN are guaranteed to have unique version numbers when the module has
changed.

REQUIREMENTS

All of my modules require Perl 5.004 or newer, even though only some of them need
it, in the interest of consistency.  That said, Perl 5.004 is already 3 years 
old, is available as a binary on practically every OS that supports Perl at all, 
and is a very solid release, so I see no reason to support anything older.

Modules in this distribution require modules in these following distributions:

File-VirtualPath-1.0.tar.gz
	- by Darren Duncan (DUNCAND)
	- File::VirtualPath 1.0 is required by:
		- CGI::Portable (stores file-system and url related paths)

HTML-EasyTags-1.05.tar.gz
	- by Darren Duncan (DUNCAND)
	- HTML::EasyTags 1.05 is required by:
		- CGI::Portable (assembles the pieces of a new HTML page)

MultiValuedHash-1.0702.tar.gz
	- by Darren Duncan (DUNCAND)
	- Data::MultiValuedHash 1.07 is required by:
		- CGI::Portable (stores new cookies prior to output)
	- CGI::MultiValuedHash 1.07 is required by:
		- CGI::Portable (stores and url-decodes user queries, posts, cookies)

mod_perl-1.24_01.tar.gz (older versions may work):
	- Apache 1.27 is required by:
		- CGI::Portable::AdapterCGI (when running under mod_perl)

HTML-FormTemplate-2.01.tar.gz
	- by Darren Duncan (DUNCAND)
	- HTML::FormTemplate 2.01 is required by:
		- CGI::WPM::MailForm (for making input forms and form reports)
		- CGI::WPM::GuestBook (for making input forms and form reports)

libnet-1.0703.tar.gz (older versions may work):
	- by Graham Barr (GBARR)
	- Net::SMTP 2.15 is required by:
		- CGI::WPM::MailForm (when sending e-mails of form data)
		- CGI::WPM::GuestBook (when sending e-mails of form data)
		- CGI::WPM::Usage (when sending e-mails of usage data)

GD (any version I suppose) is required by the "image" demo.

INSTALLATION

To install these modules, cd to the directory that contains all of the extracted 
distribution files, including this ReadMe file, and type the following:

        perl Makefile.PL
        make
        make test
        make install

The last step probably won't work if you are not the administrator of your 
machine; in that case you either need to get your administrator to install this 
for you, or put it in a your own local directory instead.

The Makefile.PL can do this for you if you substitute something like the 
following for the first line above:

        perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/tmp/myperl5
        
or:

        perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/home/me/myperl5

If you are on a Mac system and/or you are otherwise having problems with the 
Makefile, you can still install this module the old fashioned way, by copying.

Every file in the "lib" folder of this distribution goes in its corresponding 
location within the "lib" folder that came with your Perl 5 distribution.

Or alternately, put them anywhere you want, but you will need to have that 
location added to your include path by your main program using something like 
this:

        use lib '/home/me/myperl5/lib';

Then you would want to run the included test program to make sure the module is 
installed correctly.  Call it with:

        perl test.pl

Any existing POD is embedded in the module itself.  The Makefile probably 
extracted it for you in the usual manner, or you can run a POD extractor on it 
yourself to the same effect.  You can also find an HTMLized copy of the POD on 
CPAN and other public source archives; I link to one copy of it on my web site.

SUPPORT

Currently I don't have any support arranged with other people, lists, newsgroups,
or otherwise.  Feel free to ask me if you can't figure things out on your own, or
another person whom you know has used this.  I may start a mailing list for 
support issues later, so that users of my modules can help each other with them.

TO DO

	* Add a battery of ok / not ok tests.
	* Improve the documentation.
	* I have few more ideas in this regard, but am open to suggestions.
	* Now all of my pre-conceived modules for public release are done, so all 
	I've got left to do in that regards is improve the existing ones.

AUTHOR

Copyright (c) 1999-2001, Darren R. Duncan. All rights reserved. These modules are
free software; you can redistribute them and/or modify them under the same terms
as Perl itself.  However, I do request that their copyright information remains
attached to the files.  If you modify this module and redistribute a changed
version then please attach a note listing the modifications.

I am always interested in knowing how my work helps others, so if you put this
module to use in any of your own code then please send me the URL.  Also, if you
make modifications to the module because it doesn't work the way you need, please
send me a copy so that I can roll desirable changes into the main release.

Address comments, suggestions, and bug reports to perl@DarrenDuncan.net.

Share and Enjoy!
