1) shopping cart -- it will be an add-on or a stand alone. I'll need to discuss with Alex the specifics, but the way I visualize it is that the shopping area will be a category under the main links site. I need for that to be dynamic only, but most people wouldn't. I think I can get by with a modification to page.cgi, leaving everything else intact.

2) Banner program is still a work in progress. There are real logic problems that I need to work out, and then of course make sure it works.

I've just run out of _time_ for everything, and I've been fighting some bug for over a month now that just leaves me dragging (as well as a shortage of computer power on my desk).

The 3 things I have at the top of the queue are the banner program, the shopping cart program, and the all-in-one-list program (which is a part of the shopping cart program, but will work with any links database).

I guess if you need the banner rotation program now, go register it. In the spirit of the open source movement, I probably will not put any price tag on the banner program, but it also means I can't make a living off it so it only gets what time I can devote to it.

It's too rough to share at this point, really. If things settle down, and I get the shopping cart program working (I'm not doing secure anything, or transaction processing, so it should _not_ be difficult to get a first release out), I'll have a bit more free time to devote to the other projects.

Really, I'm a month behind on the shopping cart, because MiniVend just won't work, and I had no second-choice available, so we are in a "crunch" to get something working to keep our site on schedule.

If anyone has gotten MiniVend working on Solaris 7, and can trade support for that -- or at least figure out why I'm getting undefined array errors -- so I can get the catalog on-line, I'll be able to devote more time to Links. I've really put the whole site network into the Links SQL program except for the shopping cart -- and I'm even doing that now!

I have several _really_ good projects for Links SQL, but I'm getting spread too thin.

Once they all come together, they will all be wonderful!

The only saving grace is summer is on the way, and that means maybe I can find some kids who want to learn perl and do some work!

Thanks for the update. I can certainly appreciate the limitations of your busy schedule!

For what it's worth, I had no luck installing MiniVend...

I took a look at the compress white space setting. It appears to be called in only one place -- sub load_template in DBSQL.pm:

$LINKS{compress} and ($tpl !~ /^email/) and &compress (\$output);

(calls sub compress) I figured there are a couple of ways I could work around it:

1) make that line conditional

2) make a new copy of sub load_template without the call to sub compress and use that when the need arises

3) the option I chose, changing the print line in the featured sub in nph-build.cgi to bypass the template and print straight to the text file. Due to the simplicity of my template (a solitary tag), this seems like the easiest method.

Dan