(This information is taken from the original README file on SourceForge.)
For a long time I was looking for a way of maintaining some of the sites that I set up for the research team which I am member of. I wanted to get a tool which would enable me to easily change the look and feel of all pages of a site, and easily move pages of a site from one location to another.
I then used all my favourite search engines on the web, and found some pages, describing such tools. I tried some. They all missed something, from ease of use, to important features. When I tried GTML, from Gihan, I found it was pretty cool, but lacking some important features that I needed.
I wrote to Gihan asking him to add those features which I needed, since I had no Perl programming skill. He told me that he doesn't have time to do that in the near future. So I decided to read his code, and to learn Perl with his script.
The script was pretty well written and I learnt Perl, or at least understand how GTML worked very fast. It was then easy to add the features that I needed in it. I then asked Gihan if he would mind if I distribute GTML under the GNU General Public License, since his license policy was not as open as GPL, and he accepted.
Then I just updated some of the docs, prepared an archive, in the GNU spirit, and that was it.
My biggest question was to understand where the name of the tool come from, and after some reflexions I got two possible answers:
- `G' is the letter just before H, and GTML source production comes just before HTML file one
- `G' is the first letter of Gihan's first name
Well this is not a question anymore, Gihan told me the truth. Guess what? I found it: the first of my two previous hypotheses is the right one. (Well I hope that as time goes by it will be interpreted as GNU :-)
After I distributed it on my web pages, and after announcing it only on Freshmeat, I got some feedback from users coming from all around the world. I added some features which were asked of me, but realized that the source of the script needed some reorganization, and that there were some bugs in GTML.
I have done this source reorganization, and so have been able to fix bugs, and add a lot of fancy features. So now I'm waiting for users' feedback, in order to verify that I did not add bugs :-), and that GTML is now sufficiently stable.
In one month or so I hope to be able to say that it does. So I really need your help for that, please give me some feedback!.
I will not add any features, before the next stable release.
I hope my version of GTML will help you as it helps me.
--Bruno, 31 August 1999