[MetaCard and Tcl] Broggle's cousin at home on the iBook

MetaCard's great but I can't afford to buy it (not that you can anyway, now that it's been subsumed into Runtime Revolution). But using the demo version means I keep bumping up against an inbuilt limit for scripts. So I hit upon the idea of bypassing the issue by calling external scripts.

The tool I use to write blogs at home (as opposed to the HTA I use elsewhere) is written in MetaCard and does the render and preview passes using Tcl.

[Aside: Not that there's anything about Tcl that lends itself to the job. I could have used Perl, Lua, Python, sed (maybe), awk, or any number of other languages from Algol68 (there's an implementation for Mac OS X believe it or not) right through to Zen BASIC. It's just that Tcl is familiar ground.]

Right, where was I. Oh yes ...

First the script in my "Render" button ...

on mouseUp
  put "/tmp/blog_" & random(65535) into fname
  open file fname for write
  write field fSource to file fname
  close file fname
  put shell("/usr/bin/tclsh ~/MindWeb/Writing/render.tcl " & fname ) into field fGenerated
  delete file fname
end mouseUp

... which creates a file in the temporary folder (I'm on Mac OS X here ... might work on Linux ... have to do something drastic for Windows), and puts my marked-up text from field fSource into it. Then it shells out to render.tcl and captures its output into the fGenerated field. The temporary file is deleted.

Render.tcl looks like this (in its current incarnation):

#! /usr/bin/tclsh
set auto_path [lappend auto_path /usr/local/lib/tcllib1.7/]
package require textutil

set fname [lindex $argv 0]
set h [open $fname r]
set theLines [split [read $h] \n]
close $h

#puts stdout "<!-- [llength $theLines] -->"

set last ""
set inCode 0
set c 0
set ender 0

proc doOpen { aTag } {
        global inCode
        global ender
        switch -exact -- $aTag {
                code    { 
                        puts -nonewline stdout "<span style=\"font-family: courier new;\"><pre><textarea rows=\"10\" cols=\"60\" readonly>"
                        set inCode 1 
                        }
                text    { puts -nonewline stdout "<span style=\"font-family: georgia;\">" }
                quot    { puts -nonewline stdout "<blockquote>" }
                end     { set ender 1
                          puts -nonewline stdout "" }
        }
}

proc doClose { aTag } {
        global inCode
        switch -exact -- $aTag {
                code    { puts -nonewline stdout "</textarea></pre></span>"
                          set inCode 0 }
                text    { puts -nonewline stdout "</span>" }
                quot    { puts -nonewline stdout "</blockquote>" }
                end     { puts -nonewline stdout "" }
        }
}


foreach l $theLines {
        incr c
        if {[string index $l 0] == "@"} {
                doClose $last
                set last [string range $l 1 end]
                doOpen $last
                if { $ender == 1 } { break }
        } else {
                if {$l == "" } {
                        if {$inCode == 0} {
                                puts -nonewline stdout "<br><br>"
                        } else {
                                puts stdout ""
                        }
                } else {
                        if {$inCode == 1} {     
                                puts stdout [string map { {&} {&amp;} {<} {&lt;} {>} {&gt;} } [::::textutil::untabify2 $l 8]]
                        } else {
                                puts -nonewline stdout $l
                        }
                }
        }
}
if {$last != "end"} {
        doClose $last
}

#puts stdout "<!-- $c -->"

This script inhales the file specified on the command line, splits it on newline and works its way through the lines, outputting HTML according to the rules of the markup: @ in column 1 identifies markup and there are currently four types: text, code, quot and end. Very simple, but it does me fine ... for now.

So after this runs, there's HTML in the fGenerated field. If I want to see how it's going to turn out in a browser, then I click on the Preview button. Okay, so it won't have all the CSS definitions that blogspot/blogger would apply but I get a useful approximation.

The script for the Preview button ...

on mouseUp
  put "/tmp/blog_" & random(65535)  & ".html" into fname
  open file fname for write
  write field fGenerated to file fname
  close file fname
  put shell("/usr/bin/open -a Safari " & fname ) into tmp
  --delete file fname
end mouseUp

... is similar to that of the Render button except this time I create an .html file in /tmp and and write the contents of the fGenerated field to it. I ignore the output of the shell() command.

I haven't quite figured out how to delete the temporary file because, if I uncomment the "delete file", by the time Safari is ready to load the file it's gone. There might be some way of making the shell synchronous, the way that /WAIT does on Win2k's START command, but then that'd probably mean waiting until Safari quits before I can use my blog writer again ... definitely sub-optimal. Then again, it'd be waiting for "open" to close, which happens as soon as it's launched Safari. And it's 10:48 pm and ...

Well, that's it. I really enjoyed this short break away from the long run of VBScript posts. I've got more stuff cooking here at home including a short foray into Javascript (a language I should have learned ages ago). Till then ...

[VBScript/HTA] More Broggle

The next version of Broggle with the readonly textarea for the code.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <HTA:APPLICATION id=oHTA scroll="yes" showInTaskBar="yes" caption="yes" applicationName="Broggle" CONTEXTMENU="yes" SYSMENU="yes" singleInstance="yes" maximizeButton="no"> <SCRIPT language=VBScript> ResizeTo 631,500 Dim lastMark Dim inCode Function stopMarkup( mark ) Dim res Select Case mark Case "code" res = "</textarea>" inCode = False Case "quot" res = "</blockquote>" Case "text" res = "</span>" case "end" res = "" End Select stopMarkup = res End Function Function startMarkup( mark ) Dim res res = stopMarkup( lastMark ) Select Case mark Case "code" res = res & "<textarea cols=""60"" rows=""20"" style=""width: 100%; height: 500px;"" wrap=""off"" readonly>" inCode = True Case "quot" res = res & "<blockquote>" Case "text" res = res & "<span style=""font-family: georgia;"">" case "end" res = res & "" End Select startMarkup = res End Function Sub Evaluate( theText ) Dim theList, theMax, i, theLine Dim theResult Dim theTemp Dim markup theResult = "" theList = Split( theText, vbCRLF ) theMax = UBound( theList ) lastMark = "" inCode = False For i = 0 to theMax theLine = theList( i ) If Left( theLine, 1 ) = "#" Then markup = Mid( theLine, 2 ) TheResult = theResult & startMarkup( markup ) lastMark = markup Else If theLine = "" And InCode = False Then theResult = theResult & "<BR><BR>" Else If inCode = True Then theTemp = theLine If theTemp = "" Then ' theTemp = "<BR><BR>" theTemp = vbCrLf Else theTemp = Replace( theTemp, "&", "&amp;" ) theTemp = Replace( theTemp, "<", "&lt;" ) theTemp = Replace( theTemp, ">", "&gt;" ) End If theResult = theResult & theTemp & vbCRLF Else theResult = theResult & theLine & vbCRLF End If End If End If 'MsgBox theResult Next if lastMark <> "end" Then theResult = theResult & stopMarkup( lastMark ) tSlave.value = theResult End Sub Sub bEvaluate_Click() if tMaster.value = "" Then MsgBox "Can't evaluate nothing",,"Broggle" Else Evaluate tMaster.value End If End Sub Sub bCopy_Click() if tSlave.Value = "" Then MsgBox "Can't copy nothing.",,"Broggle" Else document.parentwindow.clipboardData.SetData "text", tSlave.Value End If End Sub Sub bPreview_Click If tSlave.Value <> "" Then preview.innerHTML = tSlave.Value End If End Sub Sub bScreen_Click v3.Value = document.body.clientHeight v4.Value = document.body.clientWidth End Sub </SCRIPT> </HEAD> <BODY> <P><TEXTAREA id=tMaster style="WIDTH: 578px; HEIGHT: 130px" name=tMaster rows=6 cols=61></TEXTAREA>&nbsp;</P> <P><TEXTAREA id=tSlave style="WIDTH: 579px; HEIGHT: 166px" name=tSlave rows=8 cols=62></TEXTAREA>&nbsp;</P> <P><INPUT id=bEvaluate onclick=bEvaluate_Click type=button value=Convert name=bEvaluate>&nbsp; <INPUT id="bPreview" onclick="bPreview_Click" type=button value="Preview">&nbsp; <INPUT id=bCopy onclick=bCopy_Click type=button value="Copy to Clipboard"></P> <HR> <DIV id="preview"></DIV> </BODY></HTML>

Broggle - a blogging tool in an HTML application

Okay, now a quick shift from straight VBScript to VBScript inside an HTML application. It's to deal with formatting issues I have with Blogger. The solution is probably way simpler than this.

Saved as Broggle.hta and then double-click launched in Explorer.

Just put "#code" and "#endcode" around code and "#text" and "#endtext" around text, click on [Evaluate], then click on [Copy to Clipboard], and then paste into the blog. <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1480" name=GENERATOR> <HTA:APPLICATION id=oHTA scroll="no" showInTaskBar="yes" caption="yes" applicationName="Broggle" CONTEXTMENU="yes" SYSMENU="yes" singleInstance="yes" maximizeButton="no"> <SCRIPT language=VBScript> Sub Evaluate( theText ) Dim theList, theMax, i, theLine Dim theResult Dim inCode Dim theTemp theResult = "" theList = Split( theText, vbCRLF ) theMax = UBound( theList ) inCode = False For i = 0 to theMax theLine = theList( i ) If Left( theLine, 5 ) = "#text" Then theResult = theResult & "<span style=""font-family: georgia;"">" ElseIf Left( theLine, 8 ) = "#endtext" Then theResult = theResult & "</span><br><br>" ElseIf Left( theLine, 5 ) = "#code" Then theResult = theResult & "<span style=""font-family: courier new;""><pre>" inCode = True ElseIf Left( theLine, 8 ) = "#endcode" Then theResult = theResult & "</pre></span><br><br>" inCode = False ElseIf theLine = "" Then If inCode = False Then theResult = theResult & "<br><br>" & vbCRLF Else theResult = theResult & vbCRLF End If Else If inCode = True Then theTemp = theLine theTemp = Replace( theTemp, "&", "&amp;" ) theTemp = Replace( theTemp, "<", "&lt;" ) theTemp = Replace( theTemp, ">", "&gt;" ) theResult = theResult & theTemp & vbCRLF Else theResult = theResult & theLine & vbCRLF End If End If 'MsgBox theResult Next tSlave.value = theResult End Sub Sub bEvaluate_Click() if tMaster.value = "" Then MsgBox "Can't evaluate nothing",,"Broggle" Else Evaluate tMaster.value End If End Sub Sub bCopy_Click() if tSlave.Value = "" Then MsgBox "Can't copy nothing.",,"Broggle" Else document.parentwindow.clipboardData.SetData "text", tSlave.Value End If End Sub </SCRIPT> </HEAD> <BODY> <P><INPUT id=bEvaluate onclick=bEvaluate_Click type=button value=Evaluate name=bEvaluate></P> <P><TEXTAREA id=tMaster style="WIDTH: 578px; HEIGHT: 130px" name=tMaster rows=6 cols=61></TEXTAREA>&nbsp;</P> <P><TEXTAREA id=tSlave style="WIDTH: 579px; HEIGHT: 166px" name=tSlave rows=8 cols=62></TEXTAREA>&nbsp;</P> <P><INPUT id=bCopy onclick=bCopy_Click type=button value="Copy to Clipboard"></P> <P>&nbsp;</P></BODY></HTML>