[ANN] Uniforma 0.0.2 released

ruby-talk
1

Hello all.

Subj at http://uniforma.rubyforge.org

== DESCRIPTION:

Uniforma is a library for parsing text formats and convert them to other
formats. The main goal of library design was to make text parser/generator
definition an easy task with pretty DSLs for Parser and Generator.

As for now, library distribution includes only Textile parser and HTML
generator, but it should be really easy to extend it.

== USAGE:

Uniforma parses any text string into set of fragments (DOM structure), and
then allows you to call any generator onto those fragments.

Basic usage is like:

  doc = Uniforma::textile("some *bold* text") #=> Uniforma::Dom::Document
  doc.to_html #=> "<html><body><p>some <b>bold</b> text</p></body></html>"

or:

  doc = Uniforma::textile_string("some *bold* text") #=> Array of
Uniforma::Dom::Fragment
  doc.to_html #=> "some <b>bold</b> text"

So, any defined parser adds two methods into Uniforma module:
  
  Uniforma::<parser_name>(text) #=> Uniforma::Dom::Document
  Uniforma::<parser_name>_string(text) => Array of Uniforma::Dom::Fragments

And any defined generator adds to Document and Array its method:

  Document#to_<generator_name> #=> string
  Array#to_<generator_name> #=> string

Generating methods also allow some on-the-fly "editing":

  Uniforma.textile(some_text).to_html do
    #rewrite relative links (no ":") to absolute ones
    rewrite :link, :href, %r{^[^:]+$} do |url| 'http://site.com/&#39; + url end
  end

It is also planned to provide DOM navigation methods (like those in
Hpricot[http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/hpricot/\]), but they're still not
ready.

== PARSERS

Complex format parsers should be descendants of Uniforma::Parser class. They
should utilize Parser#paragraph and Parser#fragment methods and their
shorcuts. See Parser for details.

Parsers for simple line-based text formats (wiki-like ones, having almost
any line as a new paragraph of some type) can be inherited from
Uniforma::LineParser, which provides very easy DSL to define how to parse
every line, and formatted fragments inside lines. Here's a small example:

  module Uniforma::Parsers
    class Example < LineParser
      definition do
        # == Line parsing rules

        # header with level defined by quantity of '=' symbols
        line %r{^(=+)\s*(.+)$} do |prefix, text| header(prefix.length, text)
end
        
        # plain paragraph
        line %r{^(.+)$} do |text| para(text) end

        # plain paragraph continued
        line_after :para, %r{^(.+)$} do |txt| text(txt) end

        # empty line - sign of "no paragraph"
        line '' do nop end

        # == Inline formatting parsing rules

        inline %r{\*(.+?)\*} do |text| fmt(:bold, text) end
        #...blah...
      end
    end
  end

See LineParser for details.

== GENERATORS

Uniforma::Generators::Generator is the base class for all generators,
defining simple DSL for all actions (basically, it's like what to do before
some DOM fragment, after it, and with textual data; plus a few more complex
handlers).

For defining generators which output is just text string, there is
TextGenerator base class. Example of some definitions:

  module Uniforma::Generators
    class Example < TextGenerator
      definition do
        # "before" as block handler
        before :header do |fragment| "<h%i>" % fragment.level end

        # "after" as block handler
        after :header do |fragment| "</h%i>" % fragment.level end

        # before/after shortcuts
        before :quote, "<blockquote>"
        after :quote, "</blockquote>\n"

        # composite shortcut
        around :para, "<p>", "</p>\n"

        # replace some fragment (it's text will not be printed)
        replace :img do |fragment| "<img src='%s'/>" % fragment.text end

        # some textual conversions on content - parameters syntax is like
gsub
        text_conversion /&/, "&amp;"
        text_conversion /</, "&lt;"
        text_conversion />/, "&gt;"

        # on-the-fly change of some fragment attributes
        rewrite :link, :href, /^\w+$/ do |url|
"Quotation mark - Wikipedia; + url end
      end
    end
  end

See TextGenerator for details.

== CHANGES SINCE 0.0.1

* Library became much more mature: clean code, specs, some docs, almost
complete parser for Textile and generator for HTML.
* I've decided to remove temporary incomplete parsers and generators. It
means, now we have only one, Textile=>HTML conversion. IT DOESN'T MEAN I
want to "narrow" the library goal. Extending available parsers and
generators list is a high-priority task for near versions.

V.