2.5 Features

Now that we've seen what G-Cows can do for us, here are some of its features you may find useful to achieve these goals; detailed descriptions will be given later in the manual.

Scripting language supporting:

• recursive file inclusion;

• boolean, integer and string variables;

• automatic and explicit type conversion;

• conditional expressions;

• while and for loops;

• arrays and foreach loops;

• functions returning file sizes and modify dates;

• functions performing link corrections;

• functions performing string operations (tokenizing, substitutions etc.).

Strong interaction with your Unix or Linux system

• the Unix architecture consists in simple elements arrangeable in endless combinations: G-Cows takes advantage of this philosophy by integrating itself with your system;

• the Cows interpreter is able to execute commands, scripts and programs written in every language whose interpreter or compiler is installed on your machine;

• Cows-mkgen generates makefiles allowing to handle complex dependencies among site elements.

Built-in facility for handling multiple versions of a site from the same contents

• create an alternate, fully accessible version of your site for visually impaired users, slow modem connections and so on;

• create a printable version of each page;

• pages can be cross-linked to allow visitors to easily jump from one version to another.

Built in facility for handling multilingual sites.

You can gradually translate pages in other languages: pages without a translation will be displayed in the default language with, optionally, an additional message for the visitor. This way, you can simply translate a simple message like "Sorry, this page has not been translated yet; reverting to default language (English)" in as many languages you want. Then, you gradually translate pages: users will browse the site and translated pages will be displayed in their language, the others in site's default language.