Package: zoem (07-333-3 and others)

general-purpose macro/programming language for transforming text

Zoem is a language for transforming text. It supports the creation of light-weight mark-up languages as macro packages built on top of zoem. PUD (Portable Unix Documentation) provides two such mini-languages and is shipped with zoem. The PUD languages are for generating manpages and FAQ documents in both HTML and troff.

Zoem submits text to a two-stage transformation process. Macro expansion and interpretation is followed by application of customizable character filtering rules. Zoem supports inside-out evaluation, comprehensive IO, control operators, iteration, dictionary stacks, multidimensional data storage, arithmetic expressions, regular expressions, system commands, and more.

PUD allows semantic mark-up, abstraction from repeated (mark-up) elements, centralized control, automatic generation of TOC sections, and more of that stuff.

If you'd like to generate manpages, but don't like troff syntax, and find Perl's POD too limited, zoem's PUD is likely useful for you. If you like your documents to be available in both PDF and HTML, but find Docbook XML too heavyweight (and aren't really happy with Docbook XML's baroque default tagnames), you'll like PUD.

Tags: Implemented in: C, User Interface: Command Line, Command Shell, Role: Program, Scope: Utility, Purpose: Data Conversion, Typesetting, Works with: Text, Supports Format: HTML, Hypertext Markup Language, Manpages