NAME

instant - manipulates ESIS from parsed SGML instance

Synopsis

instant [ -bhuvxHISW ] [ -t file] [ -o file] [ -D variable=value ...] [ -i id] [ -l directory] [file]

DESCRIPTION

The instant program manipulates an SGML document instance in a variety of ways, including translating into a form suitable for a formatting application and printing information about this instance. Input to instant is the output of sgmls, whose format is called Element Structure Information Set (ESIS).

FLAGS

The following are the possible command line options to instant. Output is sent to the standard output, except where otherwise noted.

-t file: Translate the SGML instance to another form, usually suitable for a formatting application. The file is called a translation spec, which specifies how the tags are to be translated. See transpec(4). By convention, names for file use the suffix .ts, for translation spec.
-d: "Data hack" — strip newline at the beginning of data records
-f length: Set the threshold for the length, in characters, of an <Entry>, over which it is called a block of filled text, to length.
-o file: Write all output (except error and warning messages) to file file. By default, output goes to stdout.
-h: Print a text representation of the hierarchy of the instance elements. The deeper an element is in the tree, the more it is indented. The data content is not printed.
-u: Print a summary of the usage of each element in the instance. Information given includes attributes, number of children, and depth in the hierarchy.
-S: Print some statistics about element usage in the instance, including how often each element is used and how much PCDATA is contained.
-x: Print the context of each element in the instance, from each element to the root of the document tree.
-v: Validate the SGML instance based on the set of constraints or descriptions in the transpec file. This flags tells instant to turn off normal output, leaving only diagnostics.
-l directory: Try to read the translation specs or other files from in the directory directory if not found in the current directory. This is called the library directory. The environment variable TPT_LIB may also be used to specify this.
-b: Interactive browser mode. The user is prompted for actions, which include moving among and examining the various nodes in the hierarchy of the instance, displaying information about them, etc.
-I: List the IDs of all elements in the instance that have an ID. The format is more suitable for other programs than humans. Lines show the ID, element GI, filename, and line, separated by colons. (This depends on the -l option to sgmls which provide filenames and line numbers.)
-i id: When translating the instance, begin processing at the element whose ID is id instead of the topmost element.
-D variable=value: Define the variable variable with value value.
-W: Do not print warning messages.
-H: Print a help message briefly describing the options.
file: Read the instance from the file file. This is expected to be the output of the program sgmls. If not specified, instant reads the instance from its standard input.

In some cases it makes no sense to combine options. This is especially true if one of the options is to perform a translation. No checking is done for this.

INTERACTIVE BROWSER

These are the commands to the interactive browser:

cd args ...

Change to a different element in the hierarchy. cd id id will change to the element whose ID is id. cd N will change to the Nth child element of the current element. Several values of N may be specified, so the program will change to successively descending elements in the hierarchy. The string .. may appear for N to move up a level in the hierarchy (like in a unix file system). A / may be specified for N to change to the top of the hierarchy.

cont

Print the context of each element.

data N

Show the data content (PCDATA, RCDATA, and DATA) of child node N.

find spec

Find paths to elements matching spec, where spec may be one of:

parent gi: Find all elements whose parent element is gi.
child gi: Find all elements which have a child element gi.
gi gi: Find all elements whose name is gi.
attr name value: Find all elements that have a attribute name that have a value value.

id ID

Show location of element whose ID is ID. If ID is ?, it will list all IDs with the paths to them.

ls

List information about the current element in the hierarchy. This includes element name, line number in instance, context, attributes and their values, child elements, data directly within this element, and the order of the current element among its siblings.

q relation element

Report whether or not the current element has the relation relation to the named element element. Values of relation are the same as for _followrel in transpec reference page.

stat

Show statistics about the hierarchy.

sum

Show a tag usage summary about the hierarchy.

tran outfile

Write translated output to file outfile. If outfile is not specified, output is sent to stdout.

tree

Print a textual representation of the hierarchy of the instance, where deeper elements are indented more.

where

Show current position in the hierarchy.

<control-D>

Exits the program.

The stat, sum, tree, cont commands take an optional first argument (of any value), which means to only consider the entire instance instead of the hierarchy from the current element.

FILES

file.ts: Translation specification file.