How this site works

One aspect of this website that I think is important to note is that it was entirely created and is maintained using Free "Libre" Open Source Software (FLOSS).

Here are the basic technologies:

Linux

This website is hosted on a Red Hat Linux server and developed on a Debian Linux PC.

Scanning

The scans of the maps are produced on either a "Mustek A3 Flatbed" scanner or a "Medion MD6471 A4 Flatbed" scanner. Both are driven using the FLOSS SANE drivers. All manipulaion of the scanned image is done programmatically using FLOSS image editing software ImageMagick, which comes preloaded on most Linux distros. Here's my Bash shell script which does most of the work for me, you may find it of use for similar tasks.

Perl

This is the main engine for anything dynamic. Any box on a page that shows a List of maps is just a Perl script that returns valid JavaScript printing out the list using UL and li HTML tags, the "Latest Additions" box on the home and maps pages is a Perl script rendering the sites RSS file the same way or the drop down lists are fed by a Perl script that returns a list of maps as valid JavaScript displaying the items with OPTION tags embedded a SELECT tag.

XML

All the data is stored in a single XML file scans.xml. Maybe if this gets too big I'll put it in a mySQL database.

JavaScript

I use JavaScript for embedding of the results of a Perl script inside a normal <select> box and to handle the action of the <select> box to jump to the next page. I've also started using it now to switch the "Details" on and off on my map listing page where it switches an Alternate CSS Stylesheet on and off.

CSS

All the text formatting is done in CSS.

RSS

RSS offers the RSS News Feeds or live Bookmarks, of what's new on my site, in a RSS enabled browser such as Firefox or a News Agregator or Email Client.