Template files have an .ros extension. They are
specialized to "container level" (generic to the intl). The default
template name is taken from the target name. For example, the following
command creats the target blah.html in
cheese/us/blah.html:
r3 target create cheese/us/blah.html
The template name is blah.html.ros, and the
search path for template and translation is (1)
cheese/us/blah.html, then (2)
cheese/us/generic.
r3 looks for a template specific to a product, an intl, and a page. The actual locations that r3 looks in for each product or intl are called elements. For example,
Elements for product might be mail,
search, and frontpage
Elements for intl might be uk and
fr
Elements for page might be index.html or
about.php
For example, when r3 builds a
target, it looks for the template blah.ros, in
frontpage/uk/index.php/. As a template,
blah.ros is a domain object. r3 looks for it in element
frontpage in dimension product,
element uk in dimension intl,
element blah.ros in dimension
page.
By defining search paths when setting up a project, templates can be shared by different dimension elements. They can be moved or copied anywhere along the search path and then customized for a particular product or intl using a simple set of XML-like tags to change the generated output.
Templates can be based on any text-based source file, including PHP, HTML, JSP, XML, ASP, and TCL, and r3 creates the target files in the same format. Sophisticated users could even create Excel, Word or Acrobat files.