== What is HOP? ==

  - HOP is a programming language dedicated to Web programming.
  - HOP is an execution platform embedded inside a Web **broker** (i.e.,
 a mid a Web server and a Web proxy).

== What is HOP designed for? ==

  - HOP is specially tuned for programming interactive Web applications.
 It is designed for programming applications such as MP3 player, agendas,
 photograph galleries, etc. It is **not** designed for programming n-tiers Web 
 applications.

== What kind of facilities are brought by HOP? ==

  - Widgets for programming GUIs (e.g., //trees//, //notepads//, //sliders//,
 ...).
  - Library facilities for:
    - Wiki parsing.
    - Network handling.
    - Database accesses.
    - Imap connections.
    - ...

== Can the HOP Web server be used as an Apache replacement? ==

  - Yes, it can. However, keep in mind that the HOP Web server is not tuned 
 for supporting a very large number of simultaneous connections. Typical it 
 can handle up to several thousands simultaneous requests but no test have 
 been conducted in more stressed environments. 
  - If you want to use HOP under heavily loaded configurations, then checks the 
 documentation to change the setting of the server that by default is configured
 for supporting light loads.

== Why are HOP markups surrounded with < and >? ==

It is a strict matter of conventions. HOP naming conventions are:
  - predicates name ends with a question mark (?).
  - imperative functions (functions performing side effects) name end s
 with an exclamation mark (!).
  - markups name starts with an less-than sign (<) and ends with a 
 greater-than sign (>).