Hipp, The Highlander Preprocessor

Introduction, what's hipp?

Hipp is a preprocessor which reads html files and writes C source files. HTML code is converted to C strings and hipp creates a C function which is compatible with Highlanders callback functions.

This means that given a stock HTML file, you can convert this file into a C source file and link it with your application.

Now to the interesting part

Being able to convert HTML to C is nice, but not exactly mind boggling. Hipp also lets you embed C code within the HTML text. You can mix and match HTML and C and convert everything to one C function.

<html>
<head>
   <title>Hipp is cool</title>
</head>

<body>
<p>It is easy to use HTML to write text.

<%
   /* This is C */
   response_add(response, "And it is cool to mix C with HTML\n");
%>

</body>
</html>

You can now use hipp to convert your hello.html file into a hello.c source file and compile that file with your favourite C compiler.

Hipp has a usable man page, please look at that page for further documentation.

But wait, there's even more

Hipp also generates a main() function as well as build scripts. You can use hipp to create an application skeleton with just one command, including Makefile.am and configure.ac

If all you have is a html file, with one simple command you can convert that file into C, create a main() function which initializes a web server and create all build scripts needed to build and distribute your application.

Hipp is a part of Highlander, available to you on the download page.

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