In the conversation titled "Off-Line Content Management Scheme?" I mentioned that I use M4 and make to generate static web pages. I got a reply saying that M4 and make are totally inferior to things like the Template Toolkit. I installed the Template Toolkit, and it seems a little better than my M4 & make setup, but not hugely. So, I bet I'm missing the magic of the Template Toolkit.

The thing that I always felt was missing from my M4 & make setup was the ability to build things like a table of contents and nice navigation controls at the bottom of the page. That's beyond pure M4 & make because it requires the templater to read through everything once, make lists of values, and then go through the munging.

It looks like that's also beyond what the Template Toolkit can do without some invasive help in perl code.

So, I guess my real question is, what the best way to handle static content generation if you want things like a table of contents and nice navigation controls?

My secondary question might be, is the Template Toolkit so much better than M4 and make, and if so, how?

Thanks!

-Pileofrogs

johnnywang, you rock! That article really spells out exactly what I'm looking for...

In reply to Templating Suggestions? by pileofrogs

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