Hi guys, I was going to create a new thread, but this one seems to fit exactly what I'm looking for. I'm creating a web app that interacts with orgmode files and allows you to edit orgmode files on the browser. The edit part is not done. I'm quite good at Javascript, and I wouldn't mind hacking something akin to orgmode elisp code and this will be what I'll do if everything else fails, but wouldn't using a grammar be a cleaner and more elegant solution? Thanks, Marcelo. On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Olivier Schwander < olivier.schwander@chadok.info> wrote: > Le 15 Apr 2011 14:31, Nick Dokos a écrit: > > Eric Schulte wrote: > > > > > If one goal of such a formal description of Org-mode would be to parse > > > text Org-mode files into an abstract syntax tree ... > > > > > > > I think this should be the starting point: what are the goals for all > this? > > Providing a formal description in EBNF is one thing. Preparing an > attribute > > grammar for input into a specific tool is another (and probably an order > of > > magnitude - or two - harder) - what would the resulting parser(s) be used > for? > > > > Clear(er) answers to these questions should go a long way towards > figuring out > > what specific tool(s) should be used - or whether it's at all necessary > to > > worry about that. > > The primary goal I see for such a formal description is to provide a > specification that third party parsers are supposed to respect. Writing > a real parser may be too much project specific and difficult to > generalize in a way usable by the community. > > During the development of neo[1], I was confronted to the need of > defining what is an org file (actually, what is an headline, a todo > keyword, a tag, a drawer, a timestamp, etc) and determining what is the > expected output of a parser. > > Maybe the most appropriate format for such a description would be free > text, letting parser developers choosing between context-free grammars, > regexps or whatever they want ( with a bunch of example org files for > reference and tests). > > Regards, > > Olivier > > [1] I am just discovering this thread > >