From: Dan Zwell <dzwell@...>
Date: 2007-07-11T13:22:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Creating a language -- HTML + a few special tags

Rob Hunter wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm looking to implement a "plug-in" language which is essentially just
> HTML plus a few custom tags that I want to support.  For example, some
> source code in this language might look like
> 
> <ul>
>   <li><FOO>something</FOO></li>
>   <li><BAR>something else</BAR></li>
> </ul>
> 
> where FOO and BAR are special tags that have some meaning that I define.
> Say, for this example, that FOO strongs text inside a <p> tag, and BAR
> emphasizes text inside a blink tag.  So the "compiled down" source would
> look like
> 
> <ul>
>   <li><p><strong>something</strong></p></li>
>   <li><blink><em>something else</em></blink></li>
> </ul>
> 
> Is there some open-source software that already does something like
> this?  Absent that, it seems like the best way is to just read in the
> HTML with something like XmlSimple, write a simple interpreter to grovel
> over the expression, evaluating the custom tags as they come up, and the
> spitting out the resulting HTML.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any advice!
> 
> --rob
> 

That sounds an awful lot like XML with XSL stylesheets... I don't know 
much about these, but I would start here
http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/xsl_languages.asp
if I wanted to learn.

-Dan