This is to announce v0.3 (tiepin) of my metalanguage translator for mxTextTools. Marc-André Lemburg provides mxTextTools, a package of fast text manipulation tools for use with Python. The tagging engine within that package takes as input a set of tuples, the Tag Table, which tells it what to do. Although simple in format, these tuples aren't particularly readable, and indeed Marc-André himself says: "I admit, these tables don't look very elegant. In fact I would much rather write them in some meta language that gets compiled into these tables instead of handcoding them. But I've never had time to do much research into this, so unless someone volunteers, it will stay like this for some time." This version of the metalanguage translator implements enough notation to allow its own tag tables to be written in the metalanguage. Although it doesn't yet support various things (notably, strings with escaped quotation marks, function calls, and embedded tables with T/F conditions) it already provides enough power for most of my own needs, and should hopefully be useful to other people. Significant advantages of using the metalanguage are: * it avoids the problem of counting (and recounting) offsets between tuples * it avoids the pitfall of forgetting a comma between two tuples (which on my Windows machine at home is enough to crash Python) * it enforces indentation for meaning in the same way that Python itself does * it provides an "if" construct * obviously, I believe it to be more readable than the bare tuple notation Licensing: I like the Python Powered license at http://starship.python.net/~just/pythonpowered/ so please apply that with suitable amendments. Although Marc-André is aware of this work, it is in no way his fault (apart from the quote above and some helpful comments, for which thanks), so don't blame him... Note that mxTextTools v1.1.1 or later is required to use the translator. The metalanguage description and translator is available at http://www.tibsnjoan.demon.co.uk/mxtext/Metalang.html mxTextTools itself is available at http://starship.python.net/crew/lemburg/mxTextTools.html <P><A HREF="http://www.tibsnjoan.demon.co.uk/mxtext/Metalang.html">Metalanguage v0.3 for mxTextTools</A> - a little language (and its translator) to make it easier to write mxTextTools tag tables. (24-Nov-99) == Tony J Ibbs (Tibs) tony@lsl.co.uk http://www.tibsnjoan.demon.co.uk/ Feet first with 5 wheels... My views! Mine! Mine! (Unless Laser-Scan ask nicely to borrow them.) -- ----------- comp.lang.python.announce (moderated) ---------- Article Submission Address: python-announce@python.org Python Language Home Page: http://www.python.org/ Python Quick Help Index: http://www.python.org/Help.html ------------------------------------------------------------