Timothy --

...and then Timo...@hmco.com said... % % I'm interested in taking a website, composed of HTML and perl cgis and % moving it offline. I want to burn it to a CD that will run on Mac and PC, % Explorer and Navigator. Are there tools to do this sort of thing? A % browser-based perl interpreter? A CGI faker?

I hate to just add a "me too", but that's basically all this is. I doubt that you'll find what you seek, but I'm interested if you do.

The problem is that a web server is much more than just a script and your browser; the web server code is what calls the script, hands it the environment, and takes the results and ships them to your browser. Without it you're just looking at file:/// static pages; you can have the browser run a script (or I'd be much happier in a couple of other projects). Your best bet for ultimate portability is (I hate to say it) javascript (oooh, I feel so dirty), but even it can't do everything that a perl (or even php, also interpreted by the web server even though it's written in your .html page) script can.

The closest thing to what you seek, I think, is some standalone little web server that runs on your various platforms, handles any calls to scripts, and so on. That, while non-trivial, seems like it could be written (even in perl, of course!) so all you'd need would be

- perl package for every OS/arch you have in mind (so it'll run from CD) - some script that helps you find the proper version, I imagine - this magic perl web server - your web site content - all of your scripts, rewritten to find the proper perl from the CD

and away you go. This magic script, in order to have a browser talk to it without knowing the difference, would have to grab port 80 (or maybe 8888 or whatever; it's your choice) and talk to the internal network, which could be tricky on, say, a Win box with no network stack loaded, and I'm sure it could be dumb enough to not have to talk off the box (but it might be nice to make it smart enough to not talk off the box so that nobody can hit you while this is running).

You know, it never hurts to check CPAN; maybe someone has already written a little web server in perl :-)

% % Thank you for whatever you say!

HTH & HAND