ANN: Atox 0.3 released

[Magnus Lie Hetland]

What is it?
===========

Atox is a framework for automated markup. With it one can quite easily
write custom scripts for converting plain text into XML in any way one
wishes. Atox is normally used as a command-line script, using a simple
XML language to specify the desired transformation from text to
markup, but it is also possible to build custom parsers using the Atox
library. The name (short for ASCII-to-XML) is inspired by such UNIX
tools and system functions as atops and atoi.


What can it do?
===============

The examples in the distribution demonstrate how you can use Atox to:

  - Mark up a (relatively simple) technical document (the Atox manual)

  - Mark up code blocks only through indentation;

  - Nest lists through indentation
  
  - Discern between different indentation "shapes" (e.g. a block quote
    versus a description list item);

  - Transform simple LaTeX into XML;

  - Add XML "syntax highlighting" to Python code;

  - Mark up screenplays or stageplays, largely based on indentation;

  - Mark up simple fictional prose;

  - Mark up simple tables.


What's new in 0.3?
==================

Some examples were added to the demo directory, highlighting the new
features:

  The 'ax:indented' tag
      This tag allows you to match an indent and a dedent easily, even
      if there is a lot of indentation between the two.

  The 'ax:try' tag
      You can indicate that a portion of the format is to be parsed
      with backtracking by wrapping it in a 'try' tag. This can be
      very useful for the places were a single-token lookahead just
      won't cut it.

  The 'ax:glue' attribute
      This replaces the experimental 'glued' attribute. The 'glue'
      attribute can contain a regular expression that much then match
      the skipped text before a glued element. Using an empty string
      makes it equivalent to 'glued="yes"'.


Where can I get it?
===================

Atox is hosted at SourceForge (http://atox.sf.net) and the current
release (0.3) is available for download via its project page
(http://sf.net/projects/atox).


The Small Print
===============

Atox is released under the MIT license. It comes with no warranty of
any kind. Also, even though the current version works well, and the
project is currently (as per early 2004) being actively developed,
there is no guarantee of continued support. What you see is what you
get.


-- 
Magnus Lie Hetland  "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay
http://hetland.org   to live in the land of the free."  -- C. M. Burns