Posted by dorayme on 11/22/06 01:19

In article <zLadnUWiAo3K5P7YnZ2dnUVZ8tednZ2d@eclipse.net.uk>,
"a human person" <ahum@nperson.com> wrote:

> > > because now when i change the menu i only have to do it once. instead of
> 40
> > > odd times.
> >
> > Nope... I am not seeing the evidence that you have saved so much
> > time? What time?
> >
> > Look, I am not trying to be awkward here or troll or provoke
> > anyone. I appreciate the theoretical, even the practical savings
> > in time over a long period or with many large sites. But what i
> > am wondering about is how could you possibly be so pleased about
> > the time you have saved when it could hardly be measurable?
> >
> > Every time includes are discussed, someone says how you don't
> > have to edit lots and lots of files on your own machine. For
> > starters. But this paints a completely false picture of any
> > intelligent approach to altering even huge numbers of files
> > considering there really is only one action you need to take,
> > that is: use any decent text editor's Find and Replace to change
> > all the files in any given directory or folder. Modern machines
> > take no time at all to do this.
> >
> > As for uploading the changed files to a remote server, yes, this
> > is definitely more time consuming, especially for dialup (I was
> > on it for years and damn hell, I wish I had looked into
> > includes!) But on broadband, it is hardly a significant time
> > thing - especially if you have your file structure well managed
> > so you can grab all the html...
> >
> > In your time savings you need to factor in all the fiddling about
> > to get includes going, issues to do with file names, server set
> > ups and prior bookmarks. The experienced will find these things a
> > breeze, for sure. But not everyone!
> >
> > As for energy savings, elegance, avoiding a "stupidish" approach,
> > this is different altogether. These things are real! But I doubt
> > there can be any time savings for the web developer to speak of
> > with most sites.
> >
> > --
> i dont know about most sites only the ones i play with. i run a poetry
> publishing website and on a regular basis i have to add poets books etc to
> the menu and i used to hate even thinking about having to go through all the
> pages adding to the menu (in my ignorance i have no idea what 'find and
> replace' is). once i had decided to move to 'includes' i just put a nice
> polite notice on the websites index page alerting people of the change and
> advising them to update any bookmarks. so whether or not i have saved as
> much time as i think i have i have peace of mind when it comes to doing
> adding to the menu, and that alone is worth its weight in gold.

Well, fair enough and you are certainly doing things in a good
way. But, as I mostly suspect from a lot of people who go on
about the great savings in time, they seem totally unaware of
multi-file Search and Replace. It is a simple idea, you get the
Find and Replace window up in a text editor and type or copy and
paste what it is you want to change. You then type or copy and
paste from elsewhere how it should be (an extra poet!). You then
choose a folder (could be the whole website) and say change all.
The computer then does all the work and you have all the changes
in a matter of seconds. It can get sophisticated with GREP
pattern usage to do complicated things but you will now have the
general idea. As I said, uploading the files to the server is
another issue...

Best of luck.

(I saw Dead Man last night, in which Johnny Depp played a man
called William Blake. A cultivated Indian that befriended him
thought he was the actual English poet...)

--
dorayme

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