The Yodl language provides a way to define character translation tables, to
activate them, and to deactivate them. A character translation table defines
how a character in the input will appear in the output.
There are two main reasons for the need of character translation tables.
First, a document language becomes much easier to use when you can type an
asterisk as * instead of $*$
or \verb/*/
(these are sequences from the
LaTeX document language). Hence, a mechanism that expands a * in the input to
to \verb/*/
on the output, saves the users a lot of typing.
Second, forcing users to type weird sequences won't work if you're planning on
converting the same Yodl document to a different output format. If the user
types \verb/*/
in the input to typeset an asterisk in the output, how
should he or she arrive at a single * in the output in another output format?
The solution is of course to define the translation for an input character
like * given the output format.
Please send Yodl questions and comments to yodl@icce.rug.nl.
Please send comments on these web pages to (address unknown)
Copyright (c) 1997, 1998, 1999 Karel Kubat and Jan Nieuwenhuizen.
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