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| -rw-r--r-- | www/text.causal.agency/015-reusing-tags.7 | 155 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | www/text.causal.agency/Makefile | 1 |
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diff --git a/www/text.causal.agency/015-reusing-tags.7 b/www/text.causal.agency/015-reusing-tags.7 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..19546496 --- /dev/null +++ b/www/text.causal.agency/015-reusing-tags.7 @@ -0,0 +1,155 @@ +.Dd January 17, 2021 +.Dt REUSING-TAGS 7 +.Os "Causal Agency" +. +.Sh NAME +.Nm reusing tags +.Nd beyond ctags +. +.Sh DESCRIPTION +I've tried to start writing this post a couple times now +and I keep getting bogged down in explanations, +so I'm just going to tell you +about some cool things I did +and hope they make sense. +. +.Pp +When I wrote my first syntax highlighter, +I decided that function definitions +should have anchor links, +because line number anchor links +are entirely useless +if you expect the file to change at all. +Since the syntax highlighter +was somewhat deliberately just a big pile of regex, +I hacked in more regex to try +to identify function and type definitions. +It wasn't elegant and it didn't always work well. +It did work though, +and I found the links very useful. +. +.Pp +Recently I was thinking about +the lexer generator +.Xr lex 1 +and decided to +rewrite the syntax highlighter +using it. +Really syntax highlighting +is no different than lexical analysis. +I ran into a problem though, +trying to preserve my anchor link function, +because really that should involve +some amount of parsing. +Trying to port my regex hacks to +.Xr lex 1 +made the lexers way more complicated +and less reliable, +so I gave up on it for a while. +. +.Pp +And then, +probably in the shower, +I realized I was approaching it +completely from the wrong direction. +There's already a tool that does what I want, +and I already use it: +.Xr ctags 1 . +All I need to do is use its output +to insert anchor links +into my syntax highlighter output. +In an afternoon I wrote +.Xr htagml 1 , +which loads tag definitions for its input file, +then scans through the input for where they match. +It can either HTML-escape +the input as it goes, +or use already formatted HTML +being piped into it from a syntax highlighter. +. +.Pp +The result is three simple tools +working together to accomplish +what a more complex tool +couldn't reliably achieve. +I'm very pleased with it, +and I've updated my site and cgit +to use the new +.Xr lex 1 Ns -based +highlighter, +.Xr ctags 1 +and +.Xr htagml 1 . +I'm currently missing a lexer for +.Xr sh 1 , +but I plan to write it eventually. +I also want to write a tool +to generate tags for +.Xr make 1 , +.Xr mdoc 7 +and perhaps +.Xr sh 1 . +The cool thing about generating more kinds of tags +is that they'll not only improve +the HTML output, +they'll also be usable in my editor. +. +.Pp +Speaking of generating different kinds of tags, +I also wrote some scripts not too long ago +for reading IETF RFCs offline. +The plain text files are available to +.Xr rsync 1 , +but they're hard to navigate on their own. +By scanning the files for headings +and generating tags, +it allows jumping to sections using +.Ic :ta +or +.Ic ^] +in +.Xr vi 1 . +For +.Xr nvim 1 +I also added an +.Ic :RFC +command to open an RFC by number +and set up +.Ic ^] +to work optimally for them. +. +.Pp +I'm still using +.Xr vi 1 +for most of my editing, +by the way. +And of course +.Xr ctags 1 +was made to work with it! +Simple old tools +are really doing it for me lately. +. +.Sh SEE ALSO +.Bl -item -compact +.It +.Lk https://causal.agency/bin/htagml.html htagml +.It +.Lk https://causal.agency/bin/hilex.html hilex +.It +.Lk https://git.causal.agency/src/tree/doc/rfc rfctags +.El +. +.Sh AUTHORS +.An june Aq Mt june@causal.agency +. +.Sh ADDENDUM +.Xr catgirl 1 , +.Xr pounce 1 , +.Xr litterbox 1 +and +.Xr scooper 1 +all have new releases, +if you're using any of them. +Also, this space is now +available over gopher, +if that's your sort of thing. diff --git a/www/text.causal.agency/Makefile b/www/text.causal.agency/Makefile index 223c4e2f..f55add26 100644 --- a/www/text.causal.agency/Makefile +++ b/www/text.causal.agency/Makefile @@ -17,6 +17,7 @@ TXTS += 011-libretls.txt TXTS += 012-inability.txt TXTS += 013-hot-tips.txt TXTS += 014-using-vi.txt +TXTS += 015-reusing-tags.txt all: ${TXTS} |