Re: Please Help: How to use minivend variable like [item-code] ina SQL search string?

[Birgitt Funk <birgitt@minivend.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from Birgitt Funk <birgitt@minivend.com>     ******


On Wed, 17 Feb 1999 cfm@maine.com wrote:

> ******    message to minivend-users from cfm@maine.com     ******
> 
> [Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
> > ******    message to minivend-users from "Tim Murphy" <goombah@netcom.ca>     ******
> 
> Most of the questions that come through this list are
> issues we deal with as a matter of course all the time.
> But I can't help with many of them because we don't 
> generally use the vast bulk of the minivend tags.  Instead
> we use our own internal library integrated into Vend/lib.  

That is interesting, as I can imagine that the minivend tag
system originally was thought of by the author as a means of
making it easier to set up a catalog as compared to programming.

Now, as far as I remember, Mike Heins mentioned once on the list
here, after the tag system had evolved and changed into a quite
voluminous and flexible system suited to be used in combination
with embedded Perl for anything you want, that
 
a.) the tag system is not a programming tool
b.) he sees often the tag system abused as being used like a 
    programming language
c.) urging to use Perl instead of the tag system for customization
    needs
d.) having become the victim of the success of his own
    tag system (as compared to the SQL/DBIish things)

Now, not being a programmer myself, after having watched
many questions posted here by ISPs and web site developers 
(who are fluent in programming, I assume) my question
is: 

    Is the tag system really difficult to understand even
    for people who can read the source code well and can
    program their own additions, modifications etc. ?
    1.) If the answer is yes, is it only because the source
        code is too voluminous to be studied for a busy
        ISP or is it really tough to dig into it.
    2.) If the answer is no, is it difficult to learn because
        even for professionals the documentation is not
        clear enough ? (So far, I considered this to be the
        case only for non-programmer).
 
Birgitt Funk

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