heitml Preprocessing

Preprocessing of a page is required if it is requested the first time or if itself or one of its include files has been updated. heitml automatically detects this situation by inspecting the files time stamps. When a page must be preprocessed, heitml does this automatically and asks the browser to request the page once again. In most cases, this happens completely automatically. In some browsers and in the case of post requests, you see a messages that asks you to press the reload button. On fast connections, you will however notice that page loading is much faster when a page is requested the second time.

Preprocessed pages are stored in heitml code files using the .hic extension. .hic files are either stored in the normal page directories or in a directory specified in the codepath directive. Usually it is no problem to delete code files, since heitml will regenerate them automatically.

heitml Code Library

The code library is a feature that is useful to reduce the size of the heitml code files. After installation, heitml is set up to use a single code library and we very much recommend to keep this setting as long as you are sure what you are doing. If you are changing the files in heitml2.1/lib you might want to switch off the code library completely (see the lib directive).

Normally code for all include files is generated and included into the code file of a heitml page. This can cause the code files to become rather big. If this is a problem, it is useful to specify a code library. A code library (such as /heitml2.1/lib/lib.hei) consists of a collection of include files. It must be declared to heitml using the lib directive. The code library will then contain the code for all the specified include files. This code will no longer be included in the code files of the pages themselves but only once in the code library.

Preprocessing of the library is done automatically. However, for speed reasons, heitml does not check the file date of every include file in the library on each request. heitml detects a changed include file only if (1) a page is preprocessed, (2) the library itself is preprocessed. So after changing an include file contained in a code library, point your browser to the URL of the library (e.g. /heitml2.1/lib/lib.hei) to remake the library. Alternatively, you might want to switch off the library during development of include files.

Preprocessing of Dynamic Include Files

Dynamic include files are a special feature of the heitml language, used in some uncommon situations. In contrast to normal include files, dynamic include files must be preprocessed and heitml can not do this automatically. heitml will however detect when preprocessing is required and show an appropriate error message. With the error message, heitml presents a link to preprocess the file.

In order to preprocess a dynamic include file, point your browser to the page that includes the file, and add ?$debug=inc&inc.=includefilename.hei where includefilename.hei is the name of the include file. Note that you can include the file into multiple pages and you need to preprocess it with just one page file.

There is an unsupported library named "dynincpre.hei" that can be used to automize preprocessing of dynamic include files in a JavaScript enabled browser. Please refer to the comments in the library for usage instructions.