Meta-Wlp definition

Revision 2.
  1. The prime directive for the Meta-Wlp definition is that it be easily parsed by PERL.
  2. Directives have format hash-mark in column 1 followed immediately by the keyword, followed immediately by a colon. Directive continues until the End-Of-Line.
  3. Two parse tokens are distinguished: whitespace and End-Of-Line. White space is defined by PERL's \s.
  4. The file is introduced on line 1 by #Meta-Wlp:.
  5. The value setting directive has form, #Macro: name value.
  6. . Macro evaluation occurs on directive lines only. Eval is used to force a macro evaluation that is placed into the text.
  7. A macro on a directive line is expanded when its name appears between dollar signs, $NAME$.
  8. The label directive has form, #: or (labelled form) #:label. This generally closes blocks opened by a command directive, the labelled form is specific, the unlabelled form is a wildcard.
  9. Command Verbatim. #Verbatim: label. The end of the verbatim block is the label directive with matching label, #:label. Between these two lines the data is taken verbatim and the hash-mark in column 1 has no special significance. The label also serves as a tag for the verbatim text.
  10. Command Shuffle. #Shuffle: label [ label]*. For each label, the end of a shuffle is a label directive #:label. After all labels have been matched, in the order listed in the Shuffle command, the shuffle block is completed. The second and succeeding blocks are shuffled, and the first block is placed at the end. The blocks are placed in a radio-button form, with name Guess returning value label.
  11. Line escape: #Not-Next: n. n a non-negative integer, default 1. The next n lines are literal.
  12. Digression command: #Digression: labelA labelB .... Between the command and #:labelA is the anchor for the digression text which follows the labelA, up to #:labelB. If many digressions are given, one at random is picked each time the anchor is activated.
Burt.Rosenberg@cs.miami.edu

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