The programs bot1.cgi, bot2.cgi, .., bot8.cgi
are stages in the development of a "Beginning of Term" program for Faculty.

The following postscript files
all.ps                finalexams.ps         talberthoursmemo.ps
directory1.ps         generalmemo1.ps       talberthoursmemo1.ps
directory2.ps         generalmemo2.ps       talbertmemo1.ps
directorydata.ps      graders2.ps           talbertmemo2.ps
finalexam2.ps         graders3.ps
finalexam3.ps         grades1.ps
are stages in the development of "boilerplate" for memos that are
to be written by bot8.cgi.
To gather course data from UB Wings, the (gnu) program "wget"
was installed (on hassard.math.buffalo.edu) and was used as outlined below.
To program the collected course data into a form that bot8.cgi can
easily understand, the program sched1.pl was developed. This
program writes the file course_schedule.txt.
The other data file used as input by bot8.cgi is
fac_staff_list.txt, as obtained from the Mathematics department
website.

Program bot8.cgi provides a unified, web-based form 
to handle in an automatic fashion most of the standard beginning-of-term 
faculty paperwork.

Hosts yellow.math.buffalo.edu and hassard.math.buffalo.edu were used in 
development, and for spring 2000, bot8.cgi
is hosted on yellow.math.buffalo.edu 
with actual printing on "-Plocal", the Apple Laserwriter in Rm 121 
Diefendorf (the Mac room).

It would be perhaps better if bot8.cgi was hosted on "newton", the
department webserver. For development, it was simpler, however, to host the 
application bot8.cgi on the machine "yellow" that is physically connected 
to the Apple Laserwriter used by the application. 

When a user first hits the bot8.cgi (passing no data) this cgi constructs 
a list of faculty names from the file fac_staff_list.txt.

The user is asked to select a name.

By selecting a name, the user passes "basicname" data  
by the get mechanism to the same program bot8.cgi.
On this activation of the program, the program knows
"basicname" and looks up the corresponding to the name,
in the files fac_staff_list.txt and course_schedule.txt.

The bot8.cgi program then presents the with instructions
and generates a form that the user completes.
The form includes

- grader request, 
- schedule final exams, 
- schedule Talbert office hours, 
- office hours on north and south campus, 
- email address,
- changes in personal information (address, spouse, home phone)
- current area, 
- material for vita, 
- material form department newsletter).

When the user finally selects the "submit" button,
the data gathered in the form is send, using the post 
back to the same program bot8.cgi.

(When the hidden variable controlflag is passed to the program
and has value = 1, that signals the program that it has all of
this form data available)

The subroutine XXrep within program bot8.cgi replaces
strings consisting of two or more "X"s, with data derived from
the forms. For each form to be written, the program bot8.cgi
(1) reads the boilerplate form into an array, 
(2) calls XXrep to replace the strings of "X"s with the actual data, 
(3) writes the resulting array out to file bot8_scratch.dat. 
(4) issues a system command which queues the file bot8_scratch.dat 
   for printing (it makes a copy of
   this file in a subdirectory that stores files to be printed).

The last sheet printed is a memo to the program user, confirming that the 
various forms have been safely delivered. 

The file fac_staff_list.txt is as stored on
www.math.buffalo.edu, part of the data used to generate the Math web pages.
The program wget can be used to transfer it to the working subdirectory
as follows:

wget http://math.buffalo.edu/fac_staff_list.txt

The file course_schedule.txt is produced by running a perl
program sched1.pl, to process the set of pages produced by
downloading both the undergraduate and graduate course schedule
information with the program wget
as follows:

wget -r -l1 -P/tmp http://wings.buffalo.edu/schedule/index/cgi?action=ent\&table=winston.SPRINGSCHED\&div=1\&ent=MTH

wget -r -l1 -P/tmp http://wings.buffalo.edu/schedule/index/cgi?action=ent\&table=winston.SPRINGSCHED\&div=2\&ent=MTH

The flag "-r" applies wget recursively to descend one level below the
starting http location. 
The flag "-l1" limits the depth of the recursive search to 1 level.
The flag "-P/tmp" uses the /tmp directory to contain the results of the
search and transfer.