SGML: DSC-1.0 released, DSSSL syntax checker and Scheme-based impl framework
From owner-sp-prog@cygnus.uwa.edu.au Mon Jan 27 12:04:52 1997
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 17:19:40 +0000 (GMT)
From: "Henry S. Thompson" <ht@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: DSC-1.0 released, DSSSL syntax checker and Scheme-based impl framework
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I am pleased to announce the availability of the public release
of version 1.0 of
DSC---DSSSL Syntax Checker
This tool, which embeds a full R4RS Scheme interpreter in James
Clark's SP parser, is designed both to provide an
online syntax checker for all DSSSL expression, style and
transformation language programs, and to serve as a preprocessor for
any Scheme-embedded DSSSL implementation. Virtually the entire
language as specified in chapters 8 through 12 of the standard is
checked for syntactic correctness, and a nearly complete
implementation of the core expression language is included.
This is a UNIX-only release, tested so far under SunOS 4/5 and FreeBSD 2.1.
You will find DSC of interest if you are:
1) A Jade user who has difficulty debugging your specifications: dsc
provides a very comprehensive set of diagnostic error and warning
messages;
2) Someone responsible for teaching or otherwise presenting DSSSL:
You can present examples with confidence that they are valid if they
get through DSC without error;
3) Someone interested in implementing DSSSL: DSC gives you a solid
platform to build on.
You can download DSC from ftp://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/pub/ht/dsc-1.0.tar.gz
My thanks to SunSoft for providing partial support for producing this tool.
More details, from the README file:
This package provides an online syntax checker for DSSSL style and
transform specifications. It implements the full semantics of the
DSSSL standard regarding specification files, composing a specification
body from one or more files conforming to the DSSSL architectural
form, then mapping from the specification body (i.e. sequences of
expression language forms) to a reordered normalised form thereof and
loading the result into a Scheme interpreter with access to a document
source grove (courtesy of SP).
Comprehensive and detailed error messages, based on a large database
of information about the calling sequences for all specification
language functions and forms are logged to stderr, together with
(optionally) information about feature usage.
The semantics of the query, style and transformation languages are NOT
implemented, although in many cases preliminary stubs are present. A
full implementation framework will be provided in release 2.0, due in
spring 1997. The core expression language, together with a number of
optional compenents, IS implemented, with two exceptions: only 8-bit
characters with single-character names are supported, and the
functions `time' and `time->string' are not implemented.
INSTALLATION
This distribution is designed to work whether or not you have already
installed James Clark's SGML parser package SP-1.1.1 and/or the Scheme
interpreter toolkit Elk 3.0, but of necessity this implies a certain
complexity.
See the file INSTALL for detailed installation instructions.
USAGE
dsc is built on top of SP-1.1.1, and all the command line options for
e.g. spam are available. However, as not one but two sgml documents
are required for DSSSL processing, the DSSSL specification and the
source document, two sets of switches and system ids can be provided:
dsc spec_switches_and_ids [-+ source_switches_and_ids]
. . .
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