1. The GlossLite jEdit Plugin

1. The GlossLite jEdit Plugin

The GlossLite jEdit plugin is currently under development

1.1 An Introduction

What the GlossLite jEdit plugin aims to do is create an easy one-click environment for the 'amateur' Gloss-user to gloss and convert their source files.

What it doesn't aim to do is everything, hence this is just a GlossLite plugin. If you want to do something special like write and use stylesheets other than the ones used by the plugin then you're going to have to use the command line to do so. The reason the plugin doesn't do anything special is that it's relatively easy to write your own macros and plugins in jEdit, or even adapt this one. If you know how to do things such as write your own stylesheets then you're probably able to write your own macros and plugins to do what you want them to do.

The GlossLite GUI consists of some buttons mounted on a jEdit 'dockable' which can be left floating or docked on some side of the jEdit screen. What follows is a brief summary of how to use the plugin. The rest of this documentation provides details of how the plugin works.

Note that the plugin always saves the current buffer before any action is performed, so you shouldn't have to. (However if you don't want your data to be saved you need to remember to choose 'save as' to change the file name.)

1.2 Glossing the current buffer

The current buffer is the text area currently open in the jEdit view. You can 'gloss' the current buffer by clicking the first button from the left, indicated by the gloss icon (lips).

Note that the glosser first looks to see whether the file has been glossed since the last save, and leaves it alone if it has not. (This is to save time: if you want to force a new gloss process then make some trivial changes to the buffer first.)

A message saying 'Glossing successful!' will appear if all is well.

1.2.1 Messages

1.3 Validating your output

This button provides an optional but useful check of the format and syntax of the output produced from the gloss process. The check is made against a document DTD. Gloss automatically provides DTDs for XHTML. If you are using an unsual format you may have to provide the DTD yourself.

1.4 Converting to TeX and HTML

The next button in the gloss dockable is the 'Convert to TeX' button. What happens here is the plugin first checks whether the current buffer is a gloss source file or an XHTML file. If it is a gloss source file then the plugin uses the glosser to first gloss the file and then convert the resulting XHTML file into TeX. The intermediate XHTML file is created in the same directory as the current buffer and output TeX file. If the current buffer is already an XHTML file then the conversion will go ahead, converting the current buffer into TeX.

The final button, labelled 'HTML', will convert the current buffer into HTML. This works in the same way as the 'Convert to TeX' button in that checks whether the current buffer is a gloss file or an XHTML file and acts accordingly.

In either case, a message saying 'Transform successful!' will appear if all is well.

1.4.1 Messages

Since the glosser may need to gloss your source code first, be prepared for any of the above messages to appear should there be an error in the source code.

This page is copyright. Web page design and creation by GLOSS.