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MELISSA

Last updated: 08.05.2002

The pages at www.raingod.com are built using a macro-processor named MELISSA (Macro Expansion by Local Interpolation of Simple Strings Automatically), written in Perl. MELISSA allows simple commands to be embedded in an HTML page in the form of comments. When MELISSA processes the page, these commands are expanded to generate the text for the final output page. Currently-defined commands include:

DEF	Define a variable
VAR	Insert a variable value in the generated page
SETTING	Insert a value from the configuration file in the generated page
MACRO	Define a macro (a block of reusable text optionally including arguments
EXPAND	Insert the text of a macro in the generated page
INCLUDE	Insert the text of a named file in the generated page
SRCINCLUDE	Insert the contents of a named file in the generated page as HTML source text.
REF	Insert a relative reference to a URL in the generated page.
REQUIRE	Ensure that a given file is copied to the target directory.
FUN	Insert the result of executing a named function in the generated page.

In addition, MELISSA performs automatic re-referencing of URLs to ensure that the generated page contains valid links to related documents and inlined objects.

MELISSA is not yet available for general use, as it is still under development and no documentation is yet available. Any announcement concerning its future availability will appear on this page.

MELISSA has nothing to do with the WM_Melissa macro virus that affected users of Microsoft Word.