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.

• 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 punctuation 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 punctuation to the right of the second *) is emphasized.

• Text surrounded by ** characters (with white-space to the left of the first ** and whitespace or punctuation 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 <a href="http://www.zope.org/">Zope</a> 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 <a href="mailto:amos@digicool.com">mail me</a>.

• 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 <a href="#12">[12]</a> 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 <a name="12">[12]</a> "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:

      <TABLE BORDER=1 CELLPADDING=2>
       <TR>
        <TD ALIGN=CENTER COLSPAN=2> <strong>Ingredients</strong> </TD>
       </TR>
       <TR>
        <TD ALIGN=CENTER COLSPAN=1> <em>Name</em> </TD>
        <TD ALIGN=CENTER COLSPAN=1> <em>Amount</em> </TD>
       </TR>
       <TR>
        <TD ALIGN=CENTER COLSPAN=1>Spam</TD>
        <TD ALIGN=CENTER COLSPAN=1>10</TD>
       </TR>
       <TR>
        <TD ALIGN=CENTER COLSPAN=1>Eggs</TD>
        <TD ALIGN=CENTER COLSPAN=1>3</TD>
       </TR>
      </TABLE>
  
  

ctag (
        s,
        em=re.compile( ctag_prefix +(ctag_middle %(( "*", ) * 6 ) ) + ctag_suffix ),
        strong=re.compile( ctag_prefix +(ctag_middl2 %(( "*", ) * 8 ) ) + ctag_suffix ),
        under=re.compile( ctag_prefix +(ctag_middle %(( "_", ) * 6 ) ) + ctag_suffix ),
        code=re.compile( ctag_prefix +(ctag_middle %(( "\'", ) * 6 ) ) + ctag_suffix ),
        )

html_quote ( v,  character_entities=(( re.compile( '&' ), '&amp;' ), ( re.compile( "<" ), '&lt;' ), ( re.compile( ">" ), '&gt;' ), ( re.compile( '"' ), '&quot;' ) ) )

html_with_references ( text,  level=1 )

indent ( aString,  indent=2 )

indent_level ( aString,  indent_space=ts_regex.compile( '\n\( *\)' ).search_group )

main ()

paragraphs ( list,  start )

reindent (
        aString,
        indent=2,
        already_untabified=0,
        )

structure ( list )

untabify ( aString,  indent_tab=ts_regex.compile( '\(\n\|^\)\( *\)\t' ).search_group )