doctools::toc::export(3tcl) Documentation tools doctools::toc::export(3tcl)______________________________________________________________________________NAME
doctools::toc::export - Exporting tables of contents
SYNOPSIS
package require doctools::toc::export ?0.1?
package require Tcl 8.4
package require doctools::config
package require doctools::toc::structure
package require snit
package require pluginmgr
::doctools::toc::export objectName
objectName method ?arg arg ...?
objectName destroy
objectName export serial serial ?format?
objectName export object object ?format?
objectName config names
objectName config get
objectName config set name ?value?
objectName config unset pattern...
export serial configuration
_________________________________________________________________DESCRIPTION
This package provides a class to manage the plugins for the export of
tables of contents to other formats, i.e. their conversion to, for
example doctoc, HTML, etc.
This is one of the three public pillars the management of tables of
contents resides on. The other two pillars are
[1] Importing tables of contents, and
[2] Holding tables of contents
For information about the Concepts of tables of contents, and their
parts, see the same-named section. For information about the data
structure which is the major input to the manager objects provided by
this package see the section ToC serialization format.
The plugin system of our class is based on the package pluginmgr, and
configured to look for plugins using
[1] the environment variable DOCTOOLS_TOC_EXPORT_PLUGINS,
[2] the environment variable DOCTOOLS_TOC_PLUGINS,
[3] the environment variable DOCTOOLS_PLUGINS,
[4] the path "~/.doctools/toc/export/plugin"
[5] the path "~/.doctools/toc/plugin"
[6] the path "~/.doctools/plugin"
[7] the path "~/.doctools/toc/export/plugins"
[8] the path "~/.doctools/toc/plugins"
[9] the path "~/.doctools/plugins"
[10] the registry entry "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\DOC‐
TOOLS\TOC\EXPORT\PLUGINS"
[11] the registry entry "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\DOC‐
TOOLS\TOC\PLUGINS"
[12] the registry entry "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\DOCTOOLS\PLUGINS"
The last three are used only when the package is run on a machine using
Windows(tm) operating system.
The whole system is delivered with six predefined export plugins,
namely
doctoc See doctoc export plugin for details.
html See html export plugin for details.
json See json export plugin for details.
nroff See nroff export plugin for details.
text See text export plugin for details.
wiki See wiki export plugin for details.
Readers wishing to write their own export plugin for some format, i.e.
plugin writers reading and understanding the section containing the
Export plugin API v2 reference is an absolute necessity, as it speci‐
fies the interaction between this package and its plugins in detail.
CONCEPTS
[1] A table of contents consists of a (possibly empty) list of ele‐
ments.
[2] Each element in the list is identified by its label.
[3] Each element is either a reference, or a division.
[4] Each reference has an associated document, identified by a sym‐
bolic id, and a textual description.
[5] Each division may have an associated document, identified by a
symbolic id.
[6] Each division consists consists of a (possibly empty) list of
elements, with each element following the rules as specified in
item 2 and above.
A few notes
[1] The above rules span up a tree of elements, with references as
the leaf nodes, and divisions as the inner nodes, and each ele‐
ment representing an entry in the whole table of contents.
[2] The identifying labels of any element E are unique within their
division (or toc), and the full label of any element E is the
list of labels for all nodes on the unique path from the root of
the tree to E, including E.
API
PACKAGE COMMANDS
::doctools::toc::export objectName
This command creates a new export manager object with an associ‐
ated Tcl command whose name is objectName. This object command
is explained in full detail in the sections Object command and
Object methods. The object command will be created under the
current namespace if the objectName is not fully qualified, and
in the specified namespace otherwise.
OBJECT COMMAND
All objects created by the ::doctools::toc::export command have the
following general form:
objectName method ?arg arg ...?
The method method and its arg'uments determine the exact behav‐
ior of the command. See section Object methods for the detailed
specifications.
OBJECT METHODS
objectName destroy
This method destroys the object it is invoked for.
objectName export serial serial ?format?
This method takes the canonical serialization of a table of con‐
tents stored in serial and converts it to the specified format,
using the export plugin for the format. An error is thrown if no
plugin could be found for the format. The string generated by
the conversion process is returned as the result of this method.
If no format is specified the method defaults to doctoc.
The specification of what a canonical serialization is can be
found in the section ToC serialization format.
The plugin has to conform to the interface specified in section
Export plugin API v2 reference.
objectName export object object ?format?
This method is a convenient wrapper around the export serial
method described by the previous item. It expects that object
is an object command supporting a serialize method returning the
canonical serialization of a table of contents. It invokes that
method, feeds the result into export serial and returns the
resulting string as its own result.
objectName config names
This method returns a list containing the names of all configu‐
ration variables currently known to the object.
objectName config get
This method returns a dictionary containing the names and values
of all configuration variables currently known to the object.
objectName config set name ?value?
This method sets the configuration variable name to the speci‐
fied value and returns the new value of the variable.
If no value is specified it simply returns the current value,
without changing it.
Note that while the user can set the predefined configuration
variables user and format doing so will have no effect, these
values will be internally overriden when invoking an import
plugin.
objectName config unset pattern...
This method unsets all configuration variables matching the
specified glob patterns. If no pattern is specified it will
unset all currently defined configuration variables.
EXPORT PLUGIN API V2 REFERENCE
Plugins are what this package uses to manage the support for any output
format beyond the ToC serialization format. Here we specify the API the
objects created by this package use to interact with their plugins.
A plugin for this package has to follow the rules listed below:
[1] A plugin is a package.
[2] The name of a plugin package has the form doc‐
tools::toc::export::FOO, where FOO is the name of the format the
plugin will generate output for. This name is also the argument
to provide to the various export methods of export manager
objects to get a string encoding a table of contents in that
format.
[3] The plugin can expect that the package doc‐
tools::toc::export::plugin is present, as indicator that it was
invoked from a genuine plugin manager.
[4] A plugin has to provide one command, with the signature shown
below.
export serial configuration
Whenever an export manager of doctools::toc has to gener‐
ate output for a table of contents it will invoke this
command.
string serial
This argument will contain the canonical serial‐
ization of the table of contents for which to gen‐
erate the output. The specification of what a
canonical serialization is can be found in the
section ToC serialization format.
dictionary configuration
This argument will contain the current configura‐
tion to apply to the generation, as a dictionary
mapping from variable names to values.
The following configuration variables have a pre‐
defined meaning all plugins have to obey, although
they can ignore this information at their discre‐
tion. Any other other configuration variables rec‐
ognized by a plugin will be described in the man‐
page for that plugin.
user This variable is expected to contain the
name of the user owning the process invok‐
ing the plugin.
format This variable is expected to contain the
name of the format whose plugin is invoked.
file This variable, if defined by the user of
the table object is expected to contain the
name of the input file for which the plugin
is generating its output for.
map This variable, if defined by the user of
the table object is expected to contain a
dictionary mapping from symbolic document
ids used in the table entries to actual
paths (or urls). A plugin has to be able to
handle the possibility that a document id
is without entry in this mapping.
[5] A single usage cycle of a plugin consists of the invokations of
the command export. This call has to leave the plugin in a state
where another usage cycle can be run without problems.
TOC SERIALIZATION FORMAT
Here we specify the format used by the doctools v2 packages to serial‐
ize tables of contents as immutable values for transport, comparison,
etc.
We distinguish between regular and canonical serializations. While a
table of contents may have more than one regular serialization only
exactly one of them will be canonical.
regular serialization
[1] The serialization of any table of contents is a nested
Tcl dictionary.
[2] This dictionary holds a single key, doctools::toc, and
its value. This value holds the contents of the table of
contents.
[3] The contents of the table of contents are a Tcl dictio‐
nary holding the title of the table of contents, a label,
and its elements. The relevant keys and their values are
title The value is a string containing the title of the
table of contents.
label The value is a string containing a label for the
table of contents.
items The value is a Tcl list holding the elements of
the table, in the order they are to be shown.
Each element is a Tcl list holding the type of the
item, and its description, in this order. An
alternative description would be that it is a Tcl
dictionary holding a single key, the item type,
mapped to the item description.
The two legal item types and their descriptions
are
reference
This item describes a single entry in the
table of contents, referencing a single
document. To this end its value is a Tcl
dictionary containing an id for the refer‐
enced document, a label, and a longer tex‐
tual description which can be associated
with the entry. The relevant keys and
their values are
id The value is a string containing the
id of the document associated with
the entry.
label The value is a string containing a
label for this entry. This string
also identifies the entry, and no
two entries (references and divi‐
sions) in the containing list are
allowed to have the same label.
desc The value is a string containing a
longer description for this entry.
division
This item describes a group of entries in
the table of contents, inducing a hierarchy
of entries. To this end its value is a Tcl
dictionary containing a label for the
group, an optional id to a document for the
whole group, and the list of entries in the
group. The relevant keys and their values
are
id The value is a string containing the
id of the document associated with
the whole group. This key is
optional.
label The value is a string containing a
label for the group. This string
also identifies the entry, and no
two entries (references and divi‐
sions) in the containing list are
allowed to have the same label.
items The value is a Tcl list holding the
elements of the group, in the order
they are to be shown. This list has
the same structure as the value for
the keyword items used to describe
the whole table of contents, see
above. This closes the recusrive
definition of the structure, with
divisions holding the same type of
elements as the whole table of con‐
tents, including other divisions.
canonical serialization
The canonical serialization of a table of contents has the for‐
mat as specified in the previous item, and then additionally
satisfies the constraints below, which make it unique among all
the possible serializations of this table of contents.
[1] The keys found in all the nested Tcl dictionaries are
sorted in ascending dictionary order, as generated by
Tcl's builtin command lsort -increasing -dict.
BUGS, IDEAS, FEEDBACK
This document, and the package it describes, will undoubtedly contain
bugs and other problems. Please report such in the category doctools
of the Tcllib SF Trackers [http://source‐
forge.net/tracker/?group_id=12883]. Please also report any ideas for
enhancements you may have for either package and/or documentation.
KEYWORDS
HTML, conversion, doctoc, documentation, export, formatting, genera‐
tion, json, manpage, markup, nroff, plugin, reference, table, table of
contents, tcler's wiki, text, url, wiki
CATEGORY
Documentation tools
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2009 Andreas Kupries <andreas_kupries@users.sourceforge.net>
doctools2toc 0.1 doctools::toc::export(3tcl)
