Gentext build 179 Release Notes
Pismo Technic Inc. Copyright 1998-2015 Joe Lowe
2015.09.16


Gentext is a general purpose text processor/generator. It can be
used for some of the same tasks as m4 or the C preprocessor. Gentext
is well suited to generate HTML websites, HTML documentation, and XML
documents, from parameterized input source.

Unlike other text processors, gentext generates output by parsing and
executing a functional input source language. The functional nature
makes many tasks much simpler to accomplish using gentext than
traditional text processors.


Simple Content Format or SCF

Gentext is built on a script syntax and parser known as SCF, Simple
Content Format. SCF is designed to be very easy to parse, to facilite
the implementation of light weight embedded parser for use within
applications. SCF is not quite as user friendly as some other
computer languages and content formats, but is effective and fairly
easy to learn.


Usage (on Windows)

gentext -h
gentext sample1.gt
gentext -o output.txt sample3.gt

cd sample_website
md out
md out\download
copy c:\windows\notepad.exe out\download
md out\about
md out\sitemap
gentext -o out\index.html home.gt
gentext -i out\download -o out\download\index.html download.gt
gentext -o out\about\index.html about.gt
gentext -o out\sitemap\index.html sitemap.gt
start out\index.html


Samples

See the included sample*.gt source files, and the source files in the
sample_website folder.


Current Gentext Deficiencies:

1. No formal SCF/gentext source syntax documentation.

Anyone interested in contributing documentation is encouraged to
contact me at joe.lowe@pismotechnic.com .

2. Error messages lack source file and line number information,
making trouble shooting script errors more difficult.

I have plans to add source location information to errors, but
for my current usage it has just not been enough of an issue to
spur me to add the code. Feedback on this is welcome.

3. Lack of a traditional expression evaluator.

A full set of mathematic and string evaluations are supported, but
are implemented as functions, so are not as easy to read and write.


Release history.

-- build 065 - 2012.02.19

Source portability improvements. No functional changes.

-- build 059 - 2010.06.08

First standalone public release. (Source has been included in various
other source packages for some time.)