About

STEP/mt Core is the core component of STEP/mt ( S tructured TE xt P rocessor based on minimal m arkup and t emplates).

Content

Class Description
Interpreter The interpreter and converter of plain text into structured text (XML). It is based on common XML standards and takes an ContentHandler as consumer. This class actually generates XML code as SAX events on the ContentHandler
Region The definitions of the document's regions. The interpreter converts plain text based on the root region of the document and creates for each sub-region hierarchical XML elements. Before using a Region all patterns must be resolved (see below).
Pattern A pattern represents a component of a text pattern, such as a character string or a more special character, like an "end-of-line" character. To implement custom patterns, the Pattern interface must be implemented.
Interval The result of a Pattern is either null (if it doesn't match the given position in the text) or an Interval as it can detect more than one character for each position.
PatternMap A PatternMap can hold multiple patterns and can be used to find the matching position of all patterns inside a character string.

For more information about the core package, see the API documentation.

Details

Resolving Patterns

Identificators and Separators of regions can be defined using references to other named patterns: 

region.addIdentificator("ABC${numberpattern}");

A pattern with the name numberpattern will be resolved at the position of the placeholder ${numberpattern} : 

Pattern numberpattern = new NumberPattern();
numberpattern.setName("numberpattern"); 

PatternMap map = new PatternMap(); 
map.add(numberpattern); 

region.addIdentificator("ABC${numberpattern}"); 

region.resolvePatterns(map);

The result of the resolving process will be a PatternSet containing a StringPattern (which is never directly addressed) and a ContainerPattern containing a NumberPattern . This is happening in the background: 

PatternSet set = new PatternSet();
set.add(new StringPattern("ABC");
set.add(new ContainerPattern("numberpattern"));

...

for (Iterator it = containerPatterns.iterator(); it.hasNext();)
{
    ((ContainerPattern) it.next()).resolve(patternMap);
}

...

public class ContainerPattern implements Pattern
{
    ...

    public void resolve(PatternMap patternMap)
    {
        containedPattern = patternMap.get(name);
    }
    ...

}