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XTRAN Demonstration: Generate HTML Table of Images

You have a directory full of graphic images, and you need a way to see what they look like in a convenient form. How about an HTML page showing them with their file names? Then you can just point your favorite browser at it.

This example uses a set of XTRAN rules (meta-code) that reads image file names (one per line) from a text file, and generates an HTML table to show the images with their file names. It picks up its input and output file names, a title, and the table's number of columns from environment variables. In this case, we specified 5 columns in the table; for demonstration purposes, we used an input file that repeatedly names two image files.

The rules for this example comprise only 42 code lines of meta-code.

Rules:

The following is an English paraphrase of the XTRAN rules used for this example. These rules comprise 42 (net) lines of XTRAN's rules language, and took less than an hour to create, refine, and debug.

    Open input file named by environment variable
    Create output file named by environment variable
    Fetch table's title and number of columns from environment variables
    Start HTML table
    For each image file name read from input file
        If table row already completed
            End table row, start next one
        Add table entry with image reference and file name
    End last table row, finalize table
    Close input and output files

Input file name file:

new.gif
updated.gif
new.gif
updated.gif
new.gif
updated.gif
new.gif
new.gif
updated.gif

Output (rendered HTML):

"New" and "Updated" Animated GIFs

new.gif	updated.gif	new.gif	updated.gif	new.gif
updated.gif	new.gif	new.gif	updated.gif

Output (HTML text):

<HTML>

<TITLE>"New" and "Updated" Animated GIFs</TITLE>

<DIV>

<H2 ALIGN="center"><FONT FACE="Arial">&quot;New&quot; and
&quot;Updated&quot; Animated GIFs</FONT></H2>

<TABLE BORDER="1" CELLSPACING="1" CELLPADDING="1">

<TR>
<TD ALIGN="center"><IMG SRC="new.gif" /><BR />new.gif</TD>
<TD ALIGN="center"><IMG SRC="updated.gif" /><BR />updated.gif</TD>
<TD ALIGN="center"><IMG SRC="new.gif" /><BR />new.gif</TD>
<TD ALIGN="center"><IMG SRC="updated.gif" /><BR />updated.gif</TD>
<TD ALIGN="center"><IMG SRC="new.gif" /><BR />new.gif</TD>
</TR>

<TR>
<TD ALIGN="center"><IMG SRC="updated.gif" /><BR />updated.gif</TD>
<TD ALIGN="center"><IMG SRC="new.gif" /><BR />new.gif</TD>
<TD ALIGN="center"><IMG SRC="new.gif" /><BR />new.gif</TD>
<TD ALIGN="center"><IMG SRC="updated.gif" /><BR />updated.gif</TD>
</TR>

</TABLE>

</DIV>

</HTML>

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