(mgp-users 00508) Re: massive changes....

[Alex Madon <amadon@megalinux.com>]

Yoshifumi Nishida wrote:

> From: Alex Madon <amadon@megalinux.com>
> >> OK, now that everybody seems to agree that we need a XML syntax,
> >> Yoshifurni could you  narrow down the problem?
> >> I would think "only" two files need to be changed :
> >> -the scanner scanner.l
> >> -the grammar grammar.y
> >> That 's really a big work but am I wrong and do we need to change more files?
>
> I think it depends on your design.
> If you'd like to just convert XML tags into mgp's internal syntax,
> I think only these two files need to be modified.
> But if you're going to add some special features related to XML,
> you may need to modify parser.c and draw.c and more.
>
> I think making external programs like sdoc2mgp.xsl could be one solution.
> In this case, you have only to modify mgp to invoke the tool automagically.
>
> In any case, I would like to suggest the parsing function should be
> modularized as possible, since we may rebuild the current source code.

Yes writing a XSL file can be a solution. That's the solution I currently use
to convert my XML documentation for presentations to MGP format.
However I've noticed some strange behaviour of magicpoint when my MGP output
contains lines beginning with a # character and TAB followed by a & character.

Baically what is making the current MGP syntax not very robust
is the command marker: a newline and a %.
What is missing in this system is a clear way to close a environment.
The XML tag system has shown to be very powerfull  and robust:
open <a>, close </a>
or
open-close <b/>

About what special XML features do you think about (that
would need us to modify more files)?

Alex

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