Hi,
Here's a suggestion that you may or may not want to apply. It would be nice if there existed a config file (or a syntax in the existing elog.cfg file) that permitted sites to define their own ELCode patterns.
Let me give you a usage case. I thought it would be nice to have LaTeX expressions show up automatically on my group's ELog installation if they entered them like this: [math]x^2 + y^2 = r_0^2[/math] So in the source code file elogd.c, I hacked in the following additions to the definition of pattern_list[]:
{"[math]", "<img src = \"http://borex.princeton.edu/mimetex?"},
{"[/math]", "\" border = \"0\" align = \"absmiddle\" />"},
and recompiled ELog.
What this does is convert the LaTeX expression into a URL that uses the "mimetex" CGI program installed on my server to output a GIF file of the equation. So my users can have inline math expressions in their log entries, like this:  . Obviously this is far too site-specific to be added to the official ELog code (unless you want to embed mimetex code into the server, which I kind of doubt  ). But it would be nice if I could specify these patterns in a config file without having to edit the source code and recompile each time I want to install a new ELog version!
Presumably others could find a use for site-specific ELCode markup too (logos, custom smilies, etc.)
Thanks for your time. |