Thanks to the both of you who have answered thus far.

Being an annual event makes it a real pain. If whatever code I end up with were to be used more frequently, it wouldn't bother me so much!!! Such is life.

Anyway, data will be stored in flatfiles (for the moment - providing I come up with a managable way to edit them!). HTML::Template is installed on the server and I have been toying with the idea of using that module either on its own or in combination with HTML::Table.

I suppose my first hurdle would be to decide on a sensible method of storing the moto-trial data and the table data. I'm driven towards separate files which could easily be read, combined and written to a *.html file on the server (the whole system is not dynamic - 'published' pages are written to disk - that's the way I wrote the thing 6 months ago but would now love to change the damn thing!)

Client doesn't really know what she wants (possibly the worst type of client?) but sees what the likes of MS Excell can do when you go File:Save as... HTML then turns to me and says "Can your program do that?!?"

Anyway - the number of tables in use may vary. Certainly the number of columns (between 6 and 9) and the number of rows (participants in each event/category/level). Therefore I'm well aware that the data will change from table to table. I had thought of creating a series of templates with HTML::Template but gut feeling said it was not the correct way to go - my stomach knows the client?! Even using the FOR loops or IF/ELSE routines in HTML::Table didn't feel right.

I'm sure I'll need to write 2 GUI's: 1 to create/edit Table defs (ie:cols, rows, bgcolor, etc) for which the data would be stored in a flat file, and the 2nd GUI for entering the data (still haven't decided on the best method for entering data or for storing it!).

I've already used htmlArea (wysiwyg TEXTAREA editor) for other interfaces for this client and she seems OK with it. I found out that it loads table templates quite nicely but the resulting page is saved as straight HTML - table data and event data mixed.

I'm really looking for a quick and dirty way out of this one. Next year, I'll re-write the system, next year they'll have more funds, and next year my invoice to them will be bigger! (if I decide to continue with these guys!)

In other words I don't want too many people wasting their time - although at the moment it's more than grately appreciated!

In reply to Re: HTML::Table - Advice please by meetn2veg
in thread HTML::Table - Advice please by meetn2veg

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