PerlPoint::Parser 0.45

PerlPoint::Parser Perl module is a PerlPoint Parser.

SYNOPSIS

# load the module:
use PerlPoint::Parser;

# build the parser and run it
# to get intermediate data in @stream
my ($parser)=new PerlPoint::Parser;
$parser->run(
stream => @stream,
files => @files,
);

The PerlPoint format, initially designed by Tom Christiansen, is intended to provide a simple and portable way to generate slides without the need of a proprietary product. Slides can be prepared in a text editor of your choice, generated on any platform where you find perl, and presented by any browser which can render the chosen output format.

To sum it up, PerlPoint Software takes an ASCII text and transforms it into slides written in a certain document description language. This is, by tradition, usually HTML, but you may decide to use another format like XML, SGML, TeX or whatever you want.

Well, this sounds fine, but how to build a translator which transforms ASCII into the output format of your choice? Thats what PerlPoint::Parser is made for. It performs the first translation step by parsing ASCII and transforming it into an intermediate stream format, which can be processed by a subsequently called translator backend. By separating parsing and output generation we get the flexibility to write as many backends as necessary by using the same parser frontend for all translators.

PerlPoint::Parser supports the complete GRAMMAR with exception of certain tags. Tags are supported the most common way: the parser recognizes any tag which is declared by the author of a translator. This way the parser can be used for various flavours of the PerlPoint language without having to be modified. So, if there is a need of a certain new flag, it can quickly be added without any change to PerlPoint::Parser.

The following chapters describe the input format (GRAMMAR) and the generated stream format (STREAM FORMAT). Finally, the class methods are described to show you how to build a parser.