Q&N: Status code placement and general format

Q&N introduction

Index pages:
authors
titles
categories
topics
translators

Pages with filenames beginning with an underscore are assumed to be workfiles and ignored.

Page status codes are embedded in an HTML comment, immediately following the </title> end-tag in the head section. The comment must begin on the same line as the end tag, but may extend over multiple lines.

Within the status comment, any group of non-whitespace characters which contains a colon ( : ) character is interpreted as a status code. Anything else is ignored; it is possible to comment a status, by avoiding colons. (A group beginning with a colon might also be ignored, but only if there are no other colons in the group. The user is responsible for avoiding such a miscoding.)

The portion of the status code preceding the colon identifies the status attribute; the portion following is its value. Both portions are case-sensitive. Values are treated as strings; they might be

  • numerical values (e.g. v:1),
  • a range of numerical values (v:0-2),
  • a string (f:cat),
  • absent (z:), in which case the attribute serves as a flag, reported in tables with the value true.

Status attribute identifiers are intended to be short. One- to four-letter strings are best, because they are incorporated in report page names when they are used as selection parameters. Case sensitivity has its risks: both report-page conflicts and confused reports could result from distinguishing two identifiers only by case.

The report generator is a Perl script, designed to scan the entire directory and report status for all or a selected subset of the files. Subset selection is by:

  • attribute identifier, with all files containing that status included in the report; or
  • attribute identifier and value, excluding all pages except those with that exact combination.

If the status is not a flag, and no value is specified, the report is sorted primarily by value of the selecting status, and secondarily by page filenames. In all other cases, the report is sorted simply by page filenames.

top of page