$Id: README,v 1.12 1998/01/04 16:00:18 ken Exp $ SGML::SPGrove A Perl 5 module for loading SGML, XML, and HTML document instances using James Clark's SGML Parser. Ken MacLeod ken@bitsko.slc.ut.us INTRODUCTION The SGML::SPGrove module links with James Clark's SGML Parser (SP) to load SGML, XML, and HTML document instances. SPGrove uses the Iterator and Visitor design patterns for accessing the grove and also comes with a module for performing simple rule-based transformations to Perl objects. See the file Changes for user-visible changes. See the `examples' directory for examples of using `SPGrove'. `DOM' relates SPGrove to the World Wide Web Consortium's Document Object Model. Newer versions of this module can be found at <ftp://ftp.uu.net/vendor/bitsko/gdo/>. SPGrove shares a mailing list with Quilt. To subscribe to the Quilt mailing list, send a message with the word `subscribe' in the Subject: field to <quilt-request@bitsko.slc.ut.us>. Copyright (C) 1997 Ken MacLeod SPGrove is distributed under the same terms as SP. See the file COPYING for distribution terms. OVERVIEW SGML::SPGrove takes a system identifier and passes it to SP to parse, as each element is parsed from the document SPGrove builds Perl objects to match. When done parsing, SPGrove returns an SGML::SPGrove object that contains the root element of the parsed document and an array (hopefully empty :-) of parser errors. Elements of the document are SGML::Element objects. Elements have a generic identifier (or name), attributes, and the contents of the element. Attributes are stored as a Perl hash, with the values as an array of scalars and SGML::SData objects. The contents of an element may be more Elements, scalars, SData objects, processing instruction (PI) objects, or Entities. SGML::SData objects are replacements for character entity references within the document. The Text::EntityMap perl module can be used to map SData replacements from common character entity sets to common output formats. <ftp://ftp.uu.net/vendor/bitsko/entity-map/> SGML::PI objects are processing instructions contained within the document. SGML::Entity, SGML::ExtEntity, and SGML::SubDocEntity are entity references. SGML::Notation objects define a notation used for entities and in attributes. SGML::Writer outputs all or part of a grove to a file or scalar. SGML::Simple::Spec, SGML::Simple::SpecBuilder, and SGML::Simple::BuilderBuilder work together to implement a simple rule-based transformer for transforming document instances to Perl objects. SpecBuilder takes a spec grove conforming to the ``SPGrove Simple Spec'' DTD and creates a specification object that can be given to BuilderBuilder to create a Visitor package that can be used to transform other groves to Perl objects. Visitors and Builders are explained thoroughly in ``Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software'' by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides, published by Addison-Wesley (ISBN 0-201-63361-2). <http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/patterns/patterns.html> INSTALLATION SGML::SPGrove requires Perl 5, James Clark's SP (from the Jade distribution), and the Perl modules Class-Eroot and Class-Visitor. SP requires a C++ compiler. <http://www.perl.com/> <http://www.jclark.com/> <http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Class/> The extra Perl modules are also available at SPGrove's source site. <ftp://ftp.uu.net/vendor/bitsko/gdo/> 1) SPGrove needs SP's `libsp.a' and include files. SP's `make install' does not install these. Create a workarea for compiling SP, compile it and keep the workarea until SPGrove is done. Edit SPGrove's Makefile.PL to point `LIBS' to SP's `lib' directory and `INC' to SP's three include directories. I've left my templates in to point the way. 2) standard Perl module after that, perl Makefile.PL make make test make install Just so you know, SPGrove's copy of SP's library is included in the install, that's over a megabyte and a half. FYI, a statically linked perl executable (`make perl') appears to run significantly faster, in one test, 17 seconds instead of 25 seconds.