Hello,
Readability is more important than decreasing the size of a file. In my
opinion, Step 1 and Step 3 decrease readability. '<marker'> is clearer than
'<m>'.
In a related reply, Dominique wrote:
It will only marginally reduce size. But shorter add less noise
so it's clearer in my opinion. <m> and <s> may look less readable
than <marker> and <suggestion> but since rule developers
use them all the time, they would be well familiar with them.
I do not create rules each day. Typically, I work with LT each day for 2 or
3 weeks. Then, I work on other projects for weeks or months.
Regards,
Mike Unwalla
Contact: www.techscribe.co.uk/techw/contact.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Naber [mailto:list2...@danielnaber.de]
Sent: 30 December 2012 20:56
To: development discussion for LanguageTool
Subject: making XML rules more compact?
Hi,
we have three languages with grammar files that are more than 1 MB large
(German, French, Catalan). The German grammar.xml has more than 24,000
lines. This size makes editing the files difficult. I have some ideas on how
to improve the situation and I'm looking for other ideas and comments:
Step 1 - the easy one
We can make the syntax a bit more compact and readable by changing some
elements:
<marker> => <m>
<suggestion> => <s>
<example type="correct"> => <right>
<example type="incorrect"> => <wrong>
Step 2 - less repetition (also easy to implement)
The contents of <message>, <url>, and <short> should be inherited from a
<rulegroup> element to its <rule> elements. This way those elements do not
need to be repeated if the are the same for all rules of a rulegroup.
Step 3 - an XML-free pattern
Add a compact way to describe simple patterns. This is best explained by
example. What is now this:
<pattern>
<token regexp="yes">foo|bar</token>
<marker>
<token>myerror</token>
</marker>
</pattern>
...could be written like this:
<p>re:foo|bar _myerror_</p>
Thus you don't need "<token>" at all as a whitespace implies a token
boundary. The prefix "re:" turns on regular expression matching (the same
for "pos:" -> POS tag, "pos:re:" -> POS tag regex). "<marker>" is replaced
by underscores. This does not support exceptions and other advanced
features, but it turns a 6-line rule into a 1-line rule. This new syntax is
optional, i.e. the old one can still be used.
What do you think about that? Other suggestions for making rule syntax more
compact?
Regards
Daniel
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