Copyright (c) 1998-2000 by Jonathan Swartz. All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.

Welcome to Mason, a Perl-based web site development and delivery
system.  Mason allows web pages and sites to be constructed from
shared, reusable building blocks called components. Components contain
a mix of Perl and HTML, and can call each other and pass values back
and forth like subroutines. Components increase modularity and
eliminate repetitive work: common design elements (headers, footers,
menus, logos) can be extracted into their own components where they
need be changed only once to affect the whole site.

Other Mason features include powerful filtering and templating
facilities, an HTML/data caching model, and a web-based site
previewing utility.  See http://www.masonhq.com/ for more information.

PREREQUISITES

Mason requires Perl 5.004 or greater plus the following CPAN modules:

    MLDBM
    Data::Dumper (comes installed with Perl 5.005 and on)
    Params::Validate

The following CPAN modules are optional for certain features, but not required:

    Time::HiRes

INSTALLATION

To install Mason, run the standard sequence:

    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make install

By default, Mason will prompt you for information about where Apache
is installed so that it can do tests with a live Apache server.  If
you would like to skip this, invoke the Makefile.PL like this:

        perl Makefile.PL --no-prompts

After Mason is installed, you will need to activate it by adding some
directives to your Apache configuration files.

The included pod docs have been pre-converted to HTML for you and
placed in the htdocs/ directory. The Mason overview (a good place to
start) is in Mason.html.

WARNINGS!

* Don't use Mason with an older mod_perl DSO (dynamic shared object).

Using Mason with a mod_perl DSO may cause your Apache server to crash
silently at startup, or fail intermittently. The fix for this problem
is to install Apache/mod_perl with mod_perl compiled statically into
the Apache binary.  Packages of Apache with a static mod_perl are
available around the net.

Testing with recent mod_perls showed improvements, but because this
bug can be so intermittent and difficult to spot, mod_perl DSO with
Mason is still strictly unsupported.

GETTING HELP

The official Mason web site is at http://www.masonhq.com/.  There
you'll find Mason documentation, news, etc.

The FAQ, currently maintained by Kwindla Kramer, can be found at
http://www.masonhq.com/faq/ or
http://allafrica.com/tools/mason/faq.html.

Several mailing lists exist for Mason users and developers. Full
information can be found at http://www.masonhq.com/maillist.html.

CODE EXAMPLES

The samples/ directory contains a few basic components as well as
a miniature commerce site built with components.

The Mason component archive (http://www.masonhq.com/arch/), launched
in November 1999, should be another good source of examples.

Links to various articles containing code examples are listed at
http://www.masonhq.com/articles.html.

REPORTING BUGS

Send bug reports to the user's mailing list for quickest response.  But
first check the mailing list archives and the official bugs list on
the Mason site to see if the problem has already been reported.

For all bug reports indicate your architecture, Apache/Perl/module
versions, etc. For installation problems send your handler.pl and
httpd.conf. For component problems try to isolate the bug in a single
small component or set of components, and send those.

If you are experiencing test failures, please run the tests like this:

  make test TEST_VERBOSE=1

and send the output along with the bug report.  Otherwise we'll just
ask you to do this before we can do anything.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

There is a companion content management system for Mason, originally
developed by Mark Schmick and now maintained by Michael Alan Dorman
and Jaron Rubenstein.  CM is a web-based interface to your component
and content files; it allows designers and programmers to work on a
site remotely without resorting to ftp or telnet. It supports
staging/production sites, RCS versioning of files, global content
searching, and a host of other features. CM is written entirely as a
set of Mason components.  Find out more and download a copy at
http://mason-cm.sourceforge.net/.

LICENSE

Mason was originally developed for the Internet technology group at
CMP Media, a publisher of technology magazines. CMP
graciously supported our efforts to release Mason as open source
software to the Perl community.  However, CMP has NO direct
involvement with the open source release and bears NO responsibility
for its support or maintenance.

Mason is provided "as is" and without any express or implied
warranties, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of
merchantibility and fitness for a particular purpose.  Mason is
released under the same terms as Perl itself.  For more information
see the "README" or "Artistic" files provided with the Perl
distribution.

AUTHOR

Jonathan Swartz
swartz@pobox.com
