SSI: path to file

**Adrienne** · Jul 23 '05, 11:46 PM

Re: SSI: path to file

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Frances Del Rio <fdr58@yahoo.co m>
writing in news:39cek7F60i 0ucU1@individua l.net:
[color=blue]
> I'm doing a website in which in all html files I have an SSI directive,
> thus:
>
> 
>
> but if I call same file from an html file in a sub-dir in webiste, thus:
>
> 
>
> it won't work, I get this error:
>
> [an error occurred while processing this directive]
>
> would appreciate any suggestions.. thank you..
>
> Frances
>
>[/color]



--
Adrienne Boswell

Arbpen Consulting

http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info

Arbpen Consulting will help you harness valuable insights and translate them into tangible results by merging data and strategy.

Please respond to the group so others can share

**Frances Del Rio** · Jul 23 '05, 11:46 PM

Re: SSI: path to file

Adrienne wrote:
[color=blue]
> Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Frances Del Rio <fdr58@yahoo.co m>
> writing in news:39cek7F60i 0ucU1@individua l.net:
>
>[color=green]
>>I'm doing a website in which in all html files I have an SSI directive,
>>thus:
>>
>> 
>>
>>but if I call same file from an html file in a sub-dir in webiste, thus:
>>
>> 
>>
>>it won't work, I get this error:
>>
>> [an error occurred while processing this directive]
>>
>>would appreciate any suggestions.. thank you..
>>
>>Frances
>>
>>[/color]
>
>
> [/color]

oh my gosh -- I had no idea.. so any time you call a file w/an SSI
directive that's not in same dir as file where directive is you have to
use 'virtual' instead of 'file'..... interesting.... . thank you very
much for prompt response... Frances

[color=blue]
>[/color]

**Frances Del Rio** · Jul 23 '05, 11:46 PM

Re: SSI: path to file

Frances Del Rio wrote:
[color=blue]
> Adrienne wrote:
>[color=green]
>> Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Frances Del Rio
>> <fdr58@yahoo.co m> writing in news:39cek7F60i 0ucU1@individua l.net:
>>
>>[color=darkred]
>>> I'm doing a website in which in all html files I have an SSI
>>> directive, thus:
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>> but if I call same file from an html file in a sub-dir in webiste, thus:
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>> it won't work, I get this error:
>>>
>>> [an error occurred while processing this directive]
>>>
>>> would appreciate any suggestions.. thank you..
>>>
>>> Frances
>>>
>>>[/color]
>>
>>
>> [/color]
>
>
> oh my gosh -- I had no idea.. so any time you call a file w/an SSI
> directive that's not in same dir as file where directive is you have to
> use 'virtual' instead of 'file'..... interesting.... . thank you very
> much for prompt response... Frances[/color]

actually....... it doesn't quite work.. images in file being called
w/SSI directive ('images/img.gif') don't show up.. in this file for
images to show up I would have to put '../images/img.gif' this is so
weird.. I think I will have to do a separate file for this dir after
all... at any rate thanks again.. Frances

**Lars Eighner** · Jul 23 '05, 11:46 PM

Re: SSI: path to file

In our last episode,
<39cgs1F611nfaU 2@individual.ne t>,
the lovely and talented Frances Del Rio
broadcast on comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html:

[color=blue]
> actually....... it doesn't quite work.. images in file being called
> w/SSI directive ('images/img.gif') don't show up..[/color]

What in the world would make you think that you can use SSI to
insert a image file into a text file (and html is just a kind of
text file). Have you ever opened an image file in a text
editor? Looks like garbage doesn't it? (If you are a MicroSoft
user, you'll just have to trust me on that.) I'm willing to bet
you don't want that string of nonsense characters in your web
page. No, you want your image to show up as a *picture* in
graphical browsers, don't you? Well, html has an element for
that. It is IMG. Look into it.
[color=blue]
> in this file for
> images to show up I would have to put '../images/img.gif' this is so
> weird.. I think I will have to do a separate file for this dir after
> all... at any rate thanks again.. Frances[/color]

No, you need to learn some basics of html, and about how various
kinds of data are stored in computer files.

You can put the text for the IMG element in a text file and use
SSI to include the text file. You might want to do this, for
example, if you had a snip of markup that was for a menu or a
logo and had IMG and text elements. You might put the text for
that snip of markup in a text file and use SSI to put the menu
or the logo on many pages. Then if you ever wanted to change
the menu or the logo, you would only have to change the snip of
markup. You would not have to edit every page that included it.
This is the primary use for includes: for markup that will be
included on many pages. If you are building your beginner's
pages by using a bunch of includes, each of which is only used
once, you are on the wrong track.

--
Lars Eighner eighner@io.com http://www.io.com/~eighner/
It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's
not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the
dark dungeons of the Internet.--G.W. Bush, Arlington Heights, Ill.,10/24/00

**Frances Del Rio** · Jul 23 '05, 11:46 PM

Re: SSI: path to file

Lars Eighner wrote:[color=blue]
> In our last episode,
> <39cgs1F611nfaU 2@individual.ne t>,
> the lovely and talented Frances Del Rio
> broadcast on comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html:
>
>
>[color=green]
>>actually..... .. it doesn't quite work.. images in file being called
>>w/SSI directive ('images/img.gif') don't show up..[/color]
>
>
> What in the world would make you think that you can use SSI to
> insert a image file into a text file (and html is just a kind of
> text file). Have you ever opened an image file in a text
> editor? Looks like garbage doesn't it? (If you are a MicroSoft
> user, you'll just have to trust me on that.) I'm willing to bet
> you don't want that string of nonsense characters in your web
> page. No, you want your image to show up as a *picture* in
> graphical browsers, don't you? Well, html has an element for
> that. It is IMG. Look into it.
>
>[color=green]
>>in this file for
>>images to show up I would have to put '../images/img.gif' this is so
>>weird.. I think I will have to do a separate file for this dir after
>>all... at any rate thanks again.. Frances[/color]
>
>
> No, you need to learn some basics of html, and about how various
> kinds of data are stored in computer files.[/color]

ok, I was misunderstood, I'm afraid I didn't explain myself too clearly
(I do know HTML very well, have been coding for about 10 years now, am a
strict hand-coder, I hate WYSIWYGs..)

file I need to call in SSI directive is called nav.html -- THIS is what
I call in SSI directive, obviously, not images.. I was talking about
images called INSIDE that file, which is a conventional HTML file..

so: nav.html is in root.. in a sub-dir I call it thus:



now INSIDE nav.html I have: <img src="images/button/gif"> THIS image
does not appear IF and only IF I call file in a SSI directive from a
sub-directory, they appear fine if file is called from a file in root
(i.e., same dir where file called in SSI directive is..) I hope this is
clearer now.. thank you very much........ Frances

**Mark Parnell** · Jul 23 '05, 11:47 PM

Re: SSI: path to file

Previously in comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Frances Del Rio
<fdr58@yahoo.co m> said:
[color=blue]
> 
>
> now INSIDE nav.html I have: <img src="images/button/gif"> THIS image
> does not appear IF and only IF I call file in a SSI directive from a
> sub-directory, they appear fine if file is called from a file in root
> (i.e., same dir where file called in SSI directive is..)[/color]

You would need to change the image to an absolute URI, e.g. <img
src="/images/button/gif">. The browser only sees the finished product of
the page, once the includes are, um, included. :-) So if you include
nav.html in a file in a subdirectory, at the moment it is looking for an
"images" directory *in that subdirectory*.

--
Mark Parnell

http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au

**Jim Moe** · Jul 23 '05, 11:47 PM

Re: SSI: path to file

Frances Del Rio wrote:[color=blue]
>
> actually....... it doesn't quite work.. images in file being called
> w/SSI directive ('images/img.gif') don't show up.. in this file for
> images to show up I would have to put '../images/img.gif' this is so
> weird.. I think I will have to do a separate file for this dir after
> all...
>[/color]
You have just stumbled on a reason why it is a good idea have the local
directory structure match the site's directory. It makes maintenance a
*lot* easier.

--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

**Lars Eighner** · Jul 23 '05, 11:47 PM

Re: SSI: path to file

In our last episode, <39cmtcF5tb42pU 1@individual.ne t>, the
lovely and talented Frances Del Rio broadcast on
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html:
[color=blue]
> file I need to call in SSI directive is called nav.html -- THIS is what
> I call in SSI directive, obviously, not images.. I was talking about
> images called INSIDE that file, which is a conventional HTML file..[/color]
[color=blue]
> so: nav.html is in root.. in a sub-dir I call it thus:[/color]
[color=blue]
> [/color]
[color=blue]
> now INSIDE nav.html I have: <img src="images/button/gif"> THIS image
> does not appear IF and only IF I call file in a SSI directive from a
> sub-directory, they appear fine if file is called from a file in root
> (i.e., same dir where file called in SSI directive is..) I hope this is
> clearer now.. thank you very much........ Frances[/color]

OK. When you use SSIs, the page as received by a browser is
seamless - as if you had actually cut-and-pasted the text from
the include into your document. The browser doesn't know it is
reading an include. So if you have a *relative* path in the
include, the browser can only interpret it as *relative* to the
document it has - the browser doesn't know there is an include,
much less where the include came from.

When the browser comes to src="images/button.gif" it is going
to ask for "button.gif " from the "images" subdirectory of
the same directory as the current document. This is because
relative paths are figured as being relative to the current
document.

You have these files:

/nav.html (the include, which has src="images/button.gif")
/images/button.gif
/somedir/mydoc.html (the document with the SSI
src="images/button.gif")

When you browse mydoc.html, the browser then looks for:

/somedir/images/button.gif (which of course is not what you
want, but is exactly the right behavior from the browser).

To fix this, you can:

1) use absolute paths in the include (src="/images/button.gif").
That leading / is your document root. There are many ways that
hosts are configured, so the document root might not be what you
consider the root of your site, or in other words, it might have
to be src="/myusername/images/button.gif"
or src="/~myusername/images/button.gif" or
src="/somealias/images/button.gif". You'll just have to
investigate how your server is configured yourself, or
experiment a little.

2) use complete URIs (i.e. src="http://www. etc.) This, of
course, will make your documents very non-portable and will make
local (i.e. offline) testing pretty much impossible.

3) have different includes for documents in different
directories. For some kinds of includes, this makes some sense.

4) scrap SSI and use a preprocessor to build pages.
Preprocessors are much more powerful than SSI, anyway.

--
Lars Eighner eighner@io.com http://www.io.com/~eighner/
"We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with
Kuwait." -- Bush's Ambassador April Glaspie, giving Saddam Hussein
the greenlight to invade Kuwait.

**Frances Del Rio** · Jul 23 '05, 11:47 PM

Re: SSI: path to file

Lars Eighner wrote:
[color=blue]
> In our last episode, <39cmtcF5tb42pU 1@individual.ne t>, the
> lovely and talented Frances Del Rio broadcast on
> comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html:
>[color=green]
>>file I need to call in SSI directive is called nav.html -- THIS is what
>>I call in SSI directive, obviously, not images.. I was talking about
>>images called INSIDE that file, which is a conventional HTML file..[/color]
>[color=green]
>>so: nav.html is in root.. in a sub-dir I call it thus:[/color]
>[color=green]
>> [/color]
>[color=green]
>>now INSIDE nav.html I have: <img src="images/button/gif"> THIS image
>>does not appear IF and only IF I call file in a SSI directive from a
>>sub-directory, they appear fine if file is called from a file in root
>>(i.e., same dir where file called in SSI directive is..) I hope this is
>>clearer now.. thank you very much........ Frances[/color]
>
>
> OK. When you use SSIs, the page as received by a browser is
> seamless - as if you had actually cut-and-pasted the text from
> the include into your document. The browser doesn't know it is
> reading an include. So if you have a *relative* path in the
> include, the browser can only interpret it as *relative* to the
> document it has - the browser doesn't know there is an include,
> much less where the include came from.
>
> When the browser comes to src="images/button.gif" it is going
> to ask for "button.gif " from the "images" subdirectory of
> the same directory as the current document. This is because
> relative paths are figured as being relative to the current
> document.
>
> You have these files:
>
> /nav.html (the include, which has src="images/button.gif")
> /images/button.gif
> /somedir/mydoc.html (the document with the SSI
> src="images/button.gif")
>
> When you browse mydoc.html, the browser then looks for:
>
> /somedir/images/button.gif (which of course is not what you
> want, but is exactly the right behavior from the browser).
>
> To fix this, you can:
>
> 1) use absolute paths in the include (src="/images/button.gif").
> That leading / is your document root. There are many ways that
> hosts are configured, so the document root might not be what you
> consider the root of your site, or in other words, it might have
> to be src="/myusername/images/button.gif"
> or src="/~myusername/images/button.gif" or
> src="/somealias/images/button.gif". You'll just have to
> investigate how your server is configured yourself, or
> experiment a little.
>
> 2) use complete URIs (i.e. src="http://www. etc.) This, of
> course, will make your documents very non-portable and will make
> local (i.e. offline) testing pretty much impossible.
>
> 3) have different includes for documents in different
> directories. For some kinds of includes, this makes some sense.
>
> 4) scrap SSI and use a preprocessor to build pages.
> Preprocessors are much more powerful than SSI, anyway.[/color]

ok, I see what issue is, thank you very much....

(what is a preprocessor?)

Frances

**Lars Eighner** · Jul 23 '05, 11:47 PM

Re: SSI: path to file

In our last episode,
<39dth2F5un24nU 1@individual.ne t>,
the lovely and talented Frances Del Rio
broadcast on comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html:
[color=blue]
> (what is a preprocessor?)[/color]

A preprocessor is a program which takes a source document
(usually some kind of text - remember html is a kind of text
document) using includes, variables, conditional statements, and
function calls and produces an output document suitable for a
particular purpose (in this case, an html document that can be
served as-is). Many preprocessors were developed to make it
easier to write computer programs - but can be used for many
kinds of text. Some have been developed especially for the
needs of html.

Here, for example, is the template for one of my pages:

#include header.chml
#include help.rbar
<DIV>%getimage( banner,&pagereg )</DIV>\
<br class="clearl">
#include index.lbar
#include help.body
#include footer.chml

Well, of course, you know what includes are, and you could do
most of this SSI. However, there is a function in the DIV
which will insert the markup for my banner image - and this
function will get the path right because in header.chml I
have set a variable to say which directory this document is
going to be in. The function will also look up the photo credit
for the banner image and write snips of markup that will be
included in the footer here and in my copyright page to ensure
the photo credit gets enter both places.

Here is a snip from help.rbar:

<li>%getlink(%< location>,links-tour,%'Links tour.')</li>
<li>%getlink(%< location>,works-tour,%'My works here.')</li>
<li>%getlink(%< location>,write rndx,%'Writers\ ' resources.')</li>
<li>%getlink(%< location>,cours estart,%'Online Writing Course.')</li>

These are functions calls which will produce links to various
of my other pages in various directories. Again these links
will always be right, because I have set the variable for the
location of this page back in header.chml.

here is what those line produce here:

<li><a href="links/links_index.htm l#tour" title=
"Links Navigation Page: Guided Tour" type="text/html" charset=
"ISO-8859-1" lang="en-us">Links tour.</a></li>

<li><a href="lars_work s_here.html#tou r" title=
"Lars Eighner's Works at This Site: Guided Tour" type="text/html"
charset="ISO-8859-1" lang="en-us">My works here.</a></li>

<li><a href="wrtrmain. html" title=
"Lars Eighner's Writers' Main Index" type="text/html" charset=
"ISO-8859-1" lang="en-us">Writers' resources.</a></li>

<li><a href="writing_c ourse/index.html" title=
"Lars Eighner's Online Writing Course" type="text/html" charset=
"ISO-8859-1" lang="en-us">Online Writing Course.</a></li>

Perhaps you have seen the kind of menu in which when the current
page is a menu item, that item is grayed or omitted (so you
won't/can't select a link to the current page). This sort of
thing is very easily done with a preprocess. The source
document has a variable that says what page it is, so the
preprocessor function doesn't put A HREF around references to
that page. You can do that by hand, but that entails changing
the menu by hand on each page that is a menu item.

This is for a preprocessor called chpp. It is something of a
pain to work with - although, of course, way ahead of generating
the markup by hand. As I have said, there are may preprocessors
available. Almost every platform will have a preprocessor for
the C programming language. It isn't ideal, but you can use it
for html. I use chpp to generate my stylesheets, even though
chpp is supposedly especially meant for html. Many
wordprocessors and editors have some (possibly crude)
preprocessor functions (which are typically used for things like
form letters or other documents with a lot of boilerplate and a
few variables).

--
Lars Eighner eighner@io.com http://www.io.com/~eighner/
Dynamic linking error: Your mistake is now everywhere.

SSI: path to file

SSI: path to file

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