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Missing a chunk of manual?

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Missing a chunk of manual?
I've been hacking away at DBManSQL templates and template globals for a while now, starting with a copy of the Bookstore stuff. I'm getting the hang of a few things, but I feel like everyone else has seen a document that I haven't.

This putative manual would give a comprehensive list of e.g. the CGI fields that db.cgi can take (db, sdb, sdo, sfk, sb, so) saying _what they do_ and showing examples of use; give a detailed walkthrough of all the functions in Dbsql::HTML and ::Home, showing what happens to run a typical web page; explain (better) the necessity and use of ::Relation::, and things like that. A programmers' manual. Does it exist?

I doubt that anyone can really make use of this thing without getting seriously down and dirty, constructing hrefs to db.cgi and guessing at what to feed it. I've been guessing with some success, but that's what leaves me with this feeling that I'm alone in the dark.

Furthermore, do I need plugins at all? I see plenty of "documentation" on how to install them, but not on what they _can do_, and why one would need to consider using them, let alone writing one's one.

An example: I need to add a record to my Customer table, and it will need three fields containing Contact.handle (admin, billing, and tech; sound familiar?). Using the default add_form, my user must know a priori that he needs to add a Contact first; I don't know where to hook in some code that automatically assigns a handle to this contact, or how to get that stuck into the proper fields (at least by default) in the add_form for Customer. Is this a job for a non-default add_form? (Probably.) For a template global to grab the next handle? For a plugin? How about if the MySQL code needs to do all this inside a BEGIN/COMMIT block?

GT::Template is wonderfully flexible, and Dbsql::Home et al puts a lot of structure on top of it (which is good). I'd just like to see that structure explained somewhere.
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Re: [jxh] Missing a chunk of manual? In reply to
The only manual is the DBManSQL 2.1.0 - October 10 2002 - Manual.pdf.

Apart from that your only other reference is the help file in the DBManSQL Admin.

If you need specific questions answered you can post them in this forum or send an email to GT support.

Simon.