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<h1>The Gedcom parser library</h1>
-
-<div align="left">The intention of this page is to provide some explanation
- of the gedcom parser, to aid development on and with it. First,
-some practical issues of testing with the parser will be explained.<br>
- <br>
-
+
+<div align="left">The intention of this page is to provide some explanation
+ of the gedcom parser, to aid development on and with it. First, some
+practical issues of testing with the parser will be explained.<br>
+ <br>
+
<h2>Basic testing<br>
- </h2>
-You should be able to perform a basic test using the commands:<br>
-
+ </h2>
+ You should be able to perform a basic test using the commands:<br>
+
<blockquote><code>./configure<br>
- make<br>
- make check</code><br>
- </blockquote>
- If everything goes OK, you'll see that some gedcom files are parsed,
- and that each parse is successful. Note that the used gedcom files
- are made by <a href="http://heiner-eichmann.de/gedcom/gedcom.htm">Heiner
+ make<br>
+ make check</code><br>
+ </blockquote>
+ If everything goes OK, you'll see that some gedcom files are parsed,
+ and that each parse is successful. Note that the used gedcom files
+ are made by <a href="http://heiner-eichmann.de/gedcom/gedcom.htm">Heiner
Eichmann</a> and are an excellent way to test gedcom parsers thoroughly.<br>
- <br>
-
+ <br>
+
<h2>Preparing for further testing</h2>
- The basic testing described above doesn't show anything else than "Parse
- succeeded", which is nice, but not very interesting. Some more detailed
- tests are possible, via the <code>testgedcom</code> program that is generated
- by <code>make test</code>. <br>
- <br>
- However, since the output that <code>testgedcom</code> generates is
- in UTF-8 format (more on this later), some preparation is necessary to have
- a full view on it. Basically, you need a terminal that understands
- and can display UTF-8 encoded characters, and you need to proper fonts installed
- to display them. I'll give some advice on this here, based on the
- Red Hat 7.1 distribution that I use, with glibc 2.2 and XFree86 4.0.x.
- Any other distribution that has the same or newer versions for these
-components should give the same results.<br>
- <br>
- For the first issue, the UTF-8 capable terminal, the safest bet is
-to use <code>xterm</code> in its unicode mode (which is supported by
-the <code> xterm</code> coming with XFree86 4.0.x). UTF-8 capabilities
- have only recently been added to <code>gnome-terminal</code>, so probably
- that is not in your distribution yet (it certainly isn't in Red Hat 7.1).<br>
- <br>
- For the second issue, you'll need the ISO 10646-1 fonts. These
+ The basic testing described above doesn't show anything else than
+"Parse succeeded", which is nice, but not very interesting. Some
+more detailed tests are possible, via the <code>testgedcom</code> program
+that is generated by <code>make test</code>. <br>
+ <br>
+ However, since the output that <code>testgedcom</code> generates is
+ in UTF-8 format (more on this later), some preparation is necessary to
+have a full view on it. Basically, you need a terminal that understands
+ and can display UTF-8 encoded characters, and you need to proper fonts installed
+ to display them. I'll give some advice on this here, based on the
+ Red Hat 7.1 distribution that I use, with glibc 2.2 and XFree86 4.0.x. Any
+ other distribution that has the same or newer versions for these components
+ should give the same results.<br>
+ <br>
+ For the first issue, the UTF-8 capable terminal, the safest bet is
+to use <code>xterm</code> in its unicode mode (which is supported by the
+ <code> xterm</code> coming with XFree86 4.0.x). UTF-8 capabilities
+ have only recently been added to <code>gnome-terminal</code>, so probably
+ that is not in your distribution yet (it certainly isn't in Red Hat 7.1).<br>
+ <br>
+ For the second issue, you'll need the ISO 10646-1 fonts. These
come also with XFree86 4.0.x.<br>
- <br>
- The way to start <code>xterm</code> in unicode mode is then e.g. (put
- everything on 1 line !):<br>
-
- <blockquote><code>LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 xterm -bg 'black' -fg 'DarkGrey' -cm
+ <br>
+ The way to start <code>xterm</code> in unicode mode is then e.g. (put
+ everything on 1 line !):<br>
+
+ <blockquote><code>LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 xterm -bg 'black' -fg 'DarkGrey' -cm
-fn '-Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-SemiCondensed--13-120-75-75-C-60-ISO10646-1'</code><br>
- </blockquote>
- This first sets the <code>LANG</code> variable to a locale that
- uses UTF-8, and then starts <code>xterm</code> with a proper Unicode font.
+ </blockquote>
+ This first sets the <code>LANG</code> variable to a locale that
+ uses UTF-8, and then starts <code>xterm</code> with a proper Unicode font.
Some sample UTF-8 plain text files can be found <a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Emgk25/ucs/examples">
- here</a> . Just <code>cat</code> them on the command line
+ here</a> . Just <code>cat</code> them on the command line
and see the result.<br>
- <br>
-
+ <br>
+
<h2>Testing the parser with debugging</h2>
- Given the UTF-8 capable terminal, you can now let the <code>testgedcom</code>
- program print the values that it parses. An example of a command
+ Given the UTF-8 capable terminal, you can now let the <code>testgedcom</code>
+ program print the values that it parses. An example of a command
line is (in the <code>gedcom</code> directory):<br>
-
+
<blockquote><code>./testgedcom -dg t/ulhc.ged</code><br>
- </blockquote>
- The <code>-dg</code> option instructs the parser to show its own debug
- messages (see <code>./testgedcom -h</code> for the full set of options).
- If everything is OK, you'll see the values from the gedcom file,
-containing a lot of special characters.<br>
- <br>
- For the ANSEL test file (<code>t/ansel.ged</code>), you have to set
+ </blockquote>
+ The <code>-dg</code> option instructs the parser to show its own debug
+ messages (see <code>./testgedcom -h</code> for the full set of options).
+ If everything is OK, you'll see the values from the gedcom file, containing
+ a lot of special characters.<br>
+ <br>
+ For the ANSEL test file (<code>t/ansel.ged</code>), you have to set
the environment variable <code>GCONV_PATH</code> to the <code>ansel</code>
- subdirectory of the gedcom directory:<br>
-
+ subdirectory of the gedcom directory:<br>
+
<blockquote><code>export GCONV_PATH=./ansel<br>
- ./testgedcom -dg t/ansel.ged<br>
- </code></blockquote>
- This is because for the ANSEL character set an extra module is needed
- for the iconv library (more on this later). But again, this should
+ ./testgedcom -dg t/ansel.ged<br>
+ </code></blockquote>
+ This is because for the ANSEL character set an extra module is needed
+ for the iconv library (more on this later). But again, this should
show a lot of special characters.<br>
- <br>
-
+ <br>
+
<h2>Testing the lexers separately</h2>
- The lexers themselves can be tested separately. For the 1-byte
-lexer (i.e. supporting the encodings with 1 byte per characters, such as
-ASCII, ANSI and ANSEL), the sequence of commands would be:<br>
-
- <blockquote><code>make clean<br>
- make test_1byte<br>
- </code></blockquote>
- This will show all tokens in the <code>t/allged.ged</code> test file. Similar
-tests can be done using <code>make test_hilo</code> and <code>make test_lohi</code>
- (for the unicode lexers).<br>
- <br>
- This concludes the testing setup. Now for some explanations...<br>
- <br>
+ The lexers themselves can be tested separately. For the 1-byte
+ lexer (i.e. supporting the encodings with 1 byte per characters, such
+as ASCII, ANSI and ANSEL), the sequence of commands would be:<br>
+ <blockquote><code>make clean<br>
+ make test_1byte<br>
+ </code></blockquote>
+ This will show all tokens in the <code>t/allged.ged</code> test file. Similar
+ tests can be done using <code>make test_hilo</code> and <code>make test_lohi</code>
+ (for the unicode lexers).<br>
+ <br>
+ This concludes the testing setup. Now for some explanations...<br>
+ <br>
+
<h2>Structure of the parser</h2>
- I see the structure of a program using the gedcom parser as follows:<br>
- <br>
- <img src="images/schema.png" alt="Gedcom parsing scheme">
- <br>
- <br>
- <br>
- TO BE COMPLETED...<br>
-
- <hr width="100%" size="2">$Id: parser.html,v 1.2 2001/12/01 15:29:00
-verthezp Exp $<br>
- $Name$<br>
- <br>
- </div>
- </div>
-
+ I see the structure of a program using the gedcom parser as follows:<br>
+ <br>
+ <img src="images/schema.png" alt="Gedcom parsing scheme">
+ <br>
+ <br>
+ <br>
+ TO BE COMPLETED...<br>
+
+ <hr width="100%" size="2">
+ <pre>$Id$<br>$Name$<br></pre>
+ <br>
+ </div>
+ </div>
+
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