Survival Guide Project (survival at comp.bioz.unibas.ch) wrote:
: another metafile) which allows to include site-specific items, and
: alternative documentation for either VMS or UNIX. The new guide has
: the potential to become a collaborative project, and will be
: available mid-october in JAM source code, together with the program
: required to prepare either printed or on-line versions of the docu-
: ment. I would need some comments on a preliminary version, which is
...
This is just to announce that the JAM language is now released.
Today, documentation in Biocomputing must be available in various formats.
Users who have never used computers for this purpose before will not easily
adopt all-electronic information and require professionally printed material.
Colleagues at remote sites who wish to print the text locally in chapters,or
send it around in electronic Mail messages, require a simple ASCII-type of
format. Electronic hypertext systems, on the other hand, have become increa-
singly popular in recent years and have the tremendous advantage that the
cross-references will be much more intuitive and easy to follow.Previously,
the use of translators provided a preliminary way of switching in between
worlds. There are various elements of text structuring and cross-references
which are similar in between the formats discussed above, however, the de-
tailed spelling and presentation to the user is different and depends on the
presentation context. The following example shall illustrate this.
RTF source
This program (see also under keyword seqed _i_seqed_;_) has been discu...
Wordprocessor text
This program (also under keyword seqed) has been discussed earlier.
LaTEX source
This program (see also, \pageref{seqed}) has been discussed earlier.
LaTEX appearance:
This program (see also, page 35) has been discussed earlier.
html source
This <a href=editing#seqed> program </a> has been discussed earlier.
html appearance
This program has been discussed earlier.
-------
In order to avoid the obvious shortcomings of translators, which were unable
to create the explanatory wrappers for cross-links as depicted above,we have
created the JAM format in order to produce different formats from one single
source.
Customization
The JAM source code contains several configurable files (extension .STE)
which hold site-specific information such as contact addresses for the local
computing center, which editor to use, and similar localized elements. The
local information, as well as the residual text, allows the adaption of both
UNIX- and VMS type of environments.
Hierarchy
The format has several classes of statements:
comments - simple lines to structure text. not processed.
conditional statements - extremely simple, similar to the C-preprocessor
and expanded before the formatting statements. Rules are:
1st column is a pound sign (#)
immediately after the pond sign there is either
o ifdef
o else
o endif
o include
formatting statements - is required to display four different types of
non-flow text. These are
verbatim (i.e., all is printed as written)
itemized (such as this text)
special (i.e., different font but not verbatim)
Each formatting statement starts with a dash (-), a letter,
and another dash at column 1, e.g. -V- starts Verbatim. End
of formatting is indicated using the same syntax (-v-).
structuring statements - processed after the conditional and formatting
statements and auomatically numbered.The text structure is in
three levels. Chapters, Sections, and Headlines are implemen-
ted using asterices embraced in dashes:
* is a chapter
-*- is a section
-**- is a Headline
referencing statements - to allow indexing and transparent reference in-
sertion. The following items are allowed:
Type Symbol Expansion to
-----------------------------------------------------------
Index entry #|text|# entry in index
Reference point +|text|+ word being referenced
Hint to reference *|text|cleartext|* hypertext link (html)
'see also, ...' (LaTEX)
'see keyword...' (RTF)
HASSLE receptor [|text|cleartext|] hypertext link to
command, or only <strong>
(html, depending on conf.)
boxed word (LaTEX)
bold italic (RTF)
N O T E
=======
We call this a 'beta' version. If you find any problems, please let us
know. We would be very interested in hearing your comments on this project.
Availability:
<a href= http://www.ch.embnet.org/jam/jam.html > Jam Page </a>.
The ftp archive is bioftp.unibas.ch, directory survival/ . Please
note that you should only use the survival/ directory. Thank you.
Acknowledgements: The program writing was supported by Basel
University, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (NF).
--
R.Doelz Klingelbergstr.70| Tel. x41 61 267 2247 Fax x41 61 267 2078|
Biocomputing CH 4056 Basel| electronic Mail doelz at ubaclu.unibas.ch|
Biozentrum der Universitaet Basel|-------------- Switzerland ---------------|
<a href=http://beta.embnet.unibas.ch/>EMBnet Switzerland:info at ch.embnet.org</a>
