[Pipet Devel] template system

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Harry,

Thinking about the whole Gatekeeper/batch system thing, we do need some sort of
a template system to convert formatted ASCII output to XML.

You know that command-line programs like yours will need to put the output into
XML so that we can have the GUI clients show pretty pictures (very pretty--I'm
looking for publication quality).  But I don't want to require the authors of
the command-line programs to change anything in their programs.

What I envisioned is someone who wants to plug a new command-line program into
the server-side of Loci, will write a text file that is a template for the
Gatekeeper to convert the text into XML.  I'm not sure just how it will work,
but I think the template essentially needs to say "this much of the output is
such and such, and that much is such and such".  You know that XML is linear,
and the ASCII output from the command-line program can be read one character at
a time.  Somehow we need to give the Gatekeeper instructions on making a
conversion between two linear formats.

Do you have any thoughts on this?  Can you think of how you might make templates
for tacg?  Is this something you'd like to work on as a project?


Jeff
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J.W. Bizzaro                  Phone: 617-552-3905
Boston College                mailto:bizzaro at bc.edu
Department of Chemistry       http://www.uml.edu/Dept/Chem/Bizzaro/
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