Structured Text Manipulation
Parse a structured text string into a form that can be used with
structured formats, like html.
Structured text is text that uses indentation and simple
symbology to indicate the structure of a document.
A structured string consists of a sequence of paragraphs separated by
one or more blank lines. Each paragraph has a level which is defined
as the minimum indentation of the paragraph. A paragraph is a
sub-paragraph of another paragraph if the other paragraph is the last
preceding paragraph that has a lower level.
Special symbology is used to indicate special constructs:
- A single-line paragraph whose immediately succeeding paragraphs are lower
level is treated as a header.
- A paragraph that begins with a '-', '*', or 'o' is treated as an
unordered list (bullet) element.
- A paragraph that begins with a sequence of digits followed by a
white-space character is treated as an ordered list element.
- A paragraph that begins with a sequence of sequences, where each
sequence is a sequence of digits or a sequence of letters followed
by a period, is treated as an ordered list element. If the sequence is
made up of lower-case i's and v's, a lower-case roman-numeral list is
generated. If the sequence is made up of upper-case I's and V's, an
upper-case roman-numeral list is generated. If the sequence is made
up of other lower case letters (typically a,b,c) a lowercase alphabetic
list is generated. If the sequence is made of of other upper case
letters (typically, A,B,C) an uppercase alphabetic list is generated.
If the sequence is something else (typically, 1,2,3), a arabic-numeral
list is generated.
- A paragraph with a first line that contains some text, followed by
some white-space and '--' is treated as a descriptive list element.
The leading text is treated as the element title.
- Sub-paragraphs of a paragraph that ends in the word 'example' or the
word 'examples', or '::' is treated as example code and is output as is.
- Text enclosed single quotes (with white-space to the left of the
first quote and whitespace or puctuation to the right of the second quote)
is treated as example code.
- Text surrounded by '*' characters (with white-space to the left of the
first '*' and whitespace or puctuation to the right of the second '*')
is *emphasized*.
- Text surrounded by '**' characters (with white-space to the left of the
first '**' and whitespace or puctuation to the right of the second '**')
is made **strong**.
- Text surrounded by '_' underscore characters (with whitespace to the left
and whitespace or punctuation to the right) is made _underlined_.
- Text encloded by double quotes followed by a colon, a URL, and concluded
by punctuation plus white space, *or* just white space, is treated as a
hyper link. For example:
'"Zope":http://www.zope.org/ is ...'
Is interpreted as 'Zope is ...'
Note: This works for relative as well as absolute URLs.
- Text enclosed by double quotes followed by a comma, one or more spaces,
an absolute URL and concluded by punctuation plus white space, or just
white space, is treated as a hyper link. For example:
"mail me", mailto:amos@digicool.com.
Is interpreted as 'mail me.'
- Text enclosed in brackets which consists only of letters, digits,
underscores and dashes is treated as hyper links within the document.
For example:
As demonstrated by Smith [12] this technique is quite effective.
Is interpreted as '... by Smith [12] this ...'. Together
with the next rule this allows easy coding of references or end notes.
- Text enclosed in brackets which is preceded by the start of a line, two
periods and a space is treated as a named link. For example:
.. [12] "Effective Techniques" Smith, Joe ...
Is interpreted as '[12] "Effective Techniques" ...'.
Together with the previous rule this allows easy coding of references or
end notes.
- A paragraph that has blocks of text enclosed in '||' is treated as a
table. The text blocks correspond to table cells and table rows are
denoted by newlines. By default the cells are center aligned. A cell
can span more than one column by preceding a block of text with an
equivalent number of cell separators '||'. Newlines and '|' cannot
be a part of the cell text. For example:
|||| **Ingredients** ||
|| *Name* || *Amount* ||
||Spam||10||
||Eggs||3||
is interpreted as::
| Ingredients |
| Name |
Amount |
| Spam |
10 |
| Eggs |
3 |