In the previous section I mentioned that it really did not make a whole lot of sense to use the same login procedure under the framework I am constructing that I used in the cgi script. Quite beyond the fact that that version provides no security, it does not well fit into the overall model of user interaction that I am employing here. While it would be possible to stick some sort of authentication mechanism in the series of subroutines that are used to create a data entry loop, apache and mod-perl provide a far more flexible mechanism for this purpose that I am now going to start using. While that is not to say that there are no circumstances in which it would be appropriate to execute some sort on authentication mechanism in a fashion similar to the sel_form() subroutine, my suspicion is that these are rare, and I do not currently envision the use of such in this application.

Implementing an independent authentication handler will, however, require a modest amount of restructuring of certain other elements of how the entry loop and the overall menuing system were constructing. In the next section I will implement a skeleton authentication handler, and in the sections following that I will take advantage of the flexibility it provides to make some interface changes, actually add a real password system (gosh!), and generally dress things up a little bit.