[Plplot-general] Scripts API <-> plplot.h

[Rafael L. <lab...@ps...>]

* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-01-21 21:04]:

> First, the script to convert from api.xml to plplot.h should include all
> the function and argument documentation in the generated plplot.h in a
> standard form.  This would help guide developers in any future changes to
> plplot.h if they wanted to fully document their new API.  Also, when any
> documenter runs that script they can carefully check that the resulting
> plplot.h is consistent with the original (except possibly for improvements
> in the documentation and whitespace changes).

That script should not be too complicate to write.  I already had something
working for the perl5 bindings: bindings/perl5/api2bind.pl

> Second, a script should be developed (Rafael had something like this in
> rudimentary form years ago) to translate a single API description from
> plplot.h in standard form (i.e, including full documentation) to api.xml.
> If the developer has chosen not to put in documentation in plplot.h in the
> standard form, then some provision should be made to put in the phrase
> "NEEDS DOCUMENTATION" in the resulting api.xml fragment.  With such a
> script, then any developer change to plplot.h can quickly be put into
> api.xml with a simple cut and paste operation.

As far as I can remember, I never wrote any script to convert plplot.h into
XML.  That should not be too difficult to write, although one has to write a
parser for C code...

> Of course all this discussion is moot without the two scripts.
> 
> Rafael if you could make those two scripts, [...]

That an insteresting project, but I cannot commit myself to do it in the
forseeable future.

-- 
Rafael