slx engine
What is slx?
slx is a content parser/generator designed to assist in creation of web pages on fridlunds.org. Its goal is to ease the production of web pages, using several styles of marking content (including HTML, bbc tag-like structure, and even some wiki symbols) in a XHTML compliant way.
The name 'slx' is always written in lowercase. Pronouncing 'slx' is as simple as saying the letters individually. slx has no real meaning, other than it being the first 3 letters in Frank's most-often used handle: slxception.
Why slx?
slx is easier than (X)HTML in that you don't have to mess with all the tags in HTML. You can use it if you want, but due to the templating, you no longer need to create entire pages at once. Also, when technology changes (such as when pages changed from HTML 4.01 to XHTML), you no longer have to worry about changing your tags to be compliant with the new specs. slx generates these pages with the correct framework for you.
slx uses bbc-style tags as well as wiki marks to create HTML. But you are not required to remember new tag structure. HTML tags will also be acceptable as long as it complies with current standards (in this case, XHTML 1.0 strict). It is also possible to use a combination of bbc codes, wiki markup and html tags in the same document with little damage. Your choice.
slx files are structured into one or more sections, which makes it easy to edit a section that needs to be affected site-wide, to several pages, or individually. Furthermore, slx has an easy templating which allows certain pages to have a different style from others. This plus moving CSS to the templates, makes presentation a breeze. It is also possible to change styles for a page using parameters in the URL, to allow testing, or a preferred style for an individual page.
slx is also designed with compatibility in mind. Backwards compatible with earlier slx pages should not break, and forward compatible with future pages, which will degrade well.
Availability?
slx is in early beta, so it is not available anytime soon. It is also anticipated that it will not be available for other offsite purpose unless there is some demand for it. In other words, it will probably stay on fridlunds.org. Sorry.
What about version 11?
fridlunds.org was due to come out with version 11, which might have been similar to slx. However, due to time and bit rot, this project was abandoned. Interesting enough, slx was introduced in version 12 of fridlunds.org, and has some resemblance to the unnamed engine used in version 11 had version 11 been released. However, the tag format was different. Version 11's tag text was included in brackets, whereas slx resembled more of a bbc coding which makes it easier when you want to bold and italic at the same time. But slx allows page templating and styling, as well as wiki notation, something that version 11 does not. Livejournal tags were unfortunately removed from slx, but at the same time, it was unnecessary as the new site introduced Frank's new blog.
slx history
Versions prior to 1.0 are considered beta and may have bigger bugs than those settled in 1.0 or later. Also note that this applies only to the engine, and not to site revisions. For site revisions, see Version history.
Version 0.10: 2009-06-20. Initial testing version
Version 0.20: 2009-06-30. Initial release version, and allows for no paragraph sections. Also fixes extranous p/br tags
Version 0.21: 2009-07-01. Fixes the problem with urls and url tags
Version 0.30: 2009-07-05. Files can now contain menu/bottom/style/title info directly.
Version 0.31: 2009-07-07. Bugfix to correct style in slx text sheets
