Re: [xmlroff] Does xmlroff use code generation?

[Tony G. <Ton...@Su...>]

Steve Cheng <g3c...@cd...> writes:
> On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, Steve Cheng wrote:
>> Is any of the xmlroff code automatically generated?
>> Seems to be, but I don't see the sources for it.
>
> Never mind, I found it in the spec-dump module.
> (Although I think, for serious development, it really
> should be integrated in the xmlroff source.)

The problem is that the generated code is really just a starting
point, sometimes because there's stuff that the XSLT stylesheets don't
handle yet and sometimes because you can make optimisations for
particular properties or FO.

The styles for generating properties have had a lot more attention
recently than have the styles for generating FOs.

I sometimes think that generating code can be a hindrance as much as a
help: spec-dump used to generate wonderfully neat, clean, regular code
that does everything for one property all in one file, but the enums
for all properties have all moved to datatype/fo-enum.[ch] and some of
the property validation code has coalesced in fo-property-util.c
rather than repeat the same stuff in multiple files.

spec-dump started out as a single stylesheet that dumped the names of
the FOs and properties, and it's expanded from there.

Regards,


Tony.