Advice for creating a web app

[Jumping until blue]

I'm confused ... and need some advice

Here is what I want to do:

I have a number of files, mostly text files formatted using Markdown
syntax but also pdfs and other types of files, that are stored in a
folder hierarchy and I want to develop a web application where I can
brows, view and search these files. The documents can be
cross-linked.

Currently I use a basic CGI to view/format the markdown files but I
don't know if I should continue to make my own system or if I should
take advantage of some existing framework.

My requirements are:

+ It should work with the text files I have in my
hierarchy (so a system that stores everything
in a database is out of the question)

+ I want to be able to copy the folder hierarchy
to a memory stick and run my system on another
computer without having to install any software
(I'm thinking of using something like Movable
Python). I'll mostly be running this on Macs
but would like to have the option to run it
on Windows/Linux

+ Searching should be fairly fast

+ I should be able to edit the text files using a
standard text editor without messing up the system.

+ I will use subversion to keep different computers
in sync.

So my question is: should I use some existing framwork? and if so,
which ones should I look at? TurboGears, Django, etc seem to be much
too elaborate for my modest needs.

 

[Olivier]

Hi there,


Jumping until blue a écrit :

I have a number of files, mostly text files formatted using Markdown
syntax but also pdfs and other types of files, that are stored in a
folder hierarchy and I want to develop a web application where I can
brows, view and search these files. The documents can be
cross-linked.

Currently I use a basic CGI to view/format the markdown files but I
don't know if I should continue to make my own system or if I should
take advantage of some existing framework.

My requirements are:

....

You may be interested in pyblosxom (http://pyblosxom.sourceforge.net/).

It's filesystem based, allows different input formats (html, rest, plain
text, I don't know about "Markdown syntax"), allows also to serve what
they call static files (like your pdfs), and you can plug some search
capacities (for instance, a wrap around grep).

I used to run it behind apache with cgi, but it should be possible to
use it with a lightweight-no install web server.

HTH,

Olivier