Re: [Groff] Troff to XML

[brian m. carlson]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 10:07:16PM +0100, Pieter Verberne wrote:
> Could it be an option (or; is it possible) to make a Troff macro wich
> -is- convertable to XML. Or in other words: Is it possible to create a
> Troff macro wich is 'syntactic sugar'/'alternative syntax' for XML?

Before I got swamped with this semester's workload, I was working on a 
project called thwack: http://crustytoothpaste.ath.cx/~bmc/code/thwack .  
It reads and processes troff input and is built on top of a SAX 2 
framework, so that everything can be autoconverted to XML.

Included is a basic set of the -me macros that produces DocBook output, 
and you can create arbitrary XML with the "namespace", "start", and 
"end" requests.  However, note that thwack is not complete; it may work 
for you, but it isn't yet bug-for-bug compatible with any version of 
troff.  In fact, many of the presentational requests are not yet 
implemented (although I have plans) because at the moment, there is no 
framework for laying out text.

It requires Qt 4 for Unicode and XML support, and patches are gratefully 
accepted.  Some things may not work, so you should expect to send 
patches or at least file bug reports.

I don't know if this is exactly what you are looking for, but it can 
probably be manipulated into doing what you want.

HTH.

--
brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US
+1 713 440 7475 | http://crustytoothpaste.ath.cx/~bmc | My opinion only
troff on top of XML: http://crustytoothpaste.ath.cx/~bmc/code/thwack
OpenPGP: RSA v4 4096b 88AC E9B2 9196 305B A994 7552 F1BA 225C 0223 B187

signature.asc
Description: Digital signature