🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <20180.2b34a24a@ul.ie> murraya@ul.ie writes:
:Do anybody out there know anything about an application to `automatically` 
:generate markuped text, (possibly according to an sgml DTD) from an ordinary 
:ASCII file. 
:
:I like this application to work on user defined rules.

I hacked a custom application to do this myself, to convert tex-like
typesetting input files into fully marked-up SGML database files.

I tried all the common parser-generators, but none would cope with the
ambiguities of a grammar complex enough to describe real data (most of
what I was extracting from these typesetting files was bibliographic
references in various styles).  I eventually wrote a TDRC arbitrary-
lookahead parser transcriber to do the job for me. It ended up looking
a lot like Yacc, was much slower than yacc, and a hell of a lot more
flexible than yacc.

To do the job completely I took about a year to write the program, and
it *always* has to be modified whenever the typesetters/editors make
small changes to their layout.

It's not a job for the fainthearted.  I don't recommend it.

Of course, it depends on your data.  Just how free-form is it?

G