About wwwace
wwwace provides a world wide web interface to ACeDB's graphical
displays. This package includes modifications to the ACeDB source
code to build wwwace, and the CGI scripts in perl to be run from the
web. It is designed for ACeDB version 4, to be run along with the
text-based WWW interface to ACeDB developed at NAL.
The interface acts like xace with only the left button available.
Only single clicks can be passed back from a clickable image in an
HTML document. Thus, any right button actions (e.g., pop-up menus) or
any drag operations are not supported. (The only exception is the
modification to the gmap display to allow scrolling.) In wwwace as
in xace, two clicks are required to follow a link to another object
on the display.
Files modified
- colcontrol.c
- if a left button down click isn't over a box, it
simulates a right button up, and recenters the map.
- display.c
- each time anything is displayed, the display name, class
and object name are printed out. If the display is TREE, exit (for
speed; don't need gif of TREE display). Also modified to resize the
active graph so that all its constituent boxes are showing.
- graphgd.c
- fixed font bug.
- graphwww.c
- culled from graphxlib.c, graphxt.c, xtsubs.c, and
tacemain.c; all X code is removed, and this acts as a 'graphics'
package (with a text front end). New tace commands: display,
displayps, gifdump, and mouseclick.
- nicedump.c
- has display name added to perl output; must be compiled
into aceserver.
- truemake
- added wwwace as a target.
CGI scripts
- display
- takes database, class, object name, and x,y pairs. Returns
an HTML page with a clickable gif of the ACeDB display of the object.
- displayps
- returns the display as postscript, rather than a gif
- getimg
- used by display; actually returns the gif.
Integration of text and graphics
Text output is generated from dbrun (using AceWWW.pm); URLs generated
in dbrun point back to dbrun, so that the default view of every object
is text. Graphics are generated by the 'display' cgi-bin script; the
display link can be added to text objects using the markup rules of
AceWWW.pm. This is the reason that the display name was added to perl
output: the markup rule can specify to add the display link only for
objects which do not have 'TREE' as the default display. Alternatively,
one could program markup rules specific to each class which test for
the presence of data required for mapping- for instance, the rule could
check that a locus has position information before adding a link to
display.
Installation instructions
- Prior to installing the wwwace files, ACeDB should compile without
errors (make xace, tace, aceserver, and aceclient).
- For each C file in this package, backup the original file from
ACeDB.
- Move the included files for acedb into place:
- w1/display.c
- w2/graphgd.c
- w2/graphwww.c
- w6/nicedump.c
- w7/colcontrol.c
- wmake/truemake
- wmake/makefile
- Make aceserver and wwwace. (Note: because of changes in display.c
and colcontrol.c, xace will not build correctly with these files in
place- hence the backups!)
- Copy the scripts display, displayps, and getimg to cgi-bin. Edit
the paths (to perl, wwwace, the data, etc.) within the files for your
system setup.
- Add a markup rule (such as the one in the global.emr file
provided) to either global.emr or yourDB.emr to add the link to the
display script.