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Name

       instant - manipulates ESIS from parsed SGML instance

Synopsis

       instant [ -bhuvxHISW ]  [ -t file]  [ -s file]  [ -c file]  [ -o file]  [ -D
       variable=value ...]  [ -i id]  [ -l directory]  [file]

Description

       The instant program manipulates an SGML document instance in a variety of ways,  including
       translating  into  a  form  suitable for a formatting application and printing information
       about this instance.  Input to instant is the output of nsgmls,  whose  format  is  called
       Element Structure Information Set (ESIS).

Flags

       The  following  are  the  possible  command line options to instant. Output is sent to the
       standard output, except where otherwise noted.

       -t file
              Translate the SGML instance to another form,  usually  suitable  for  a  formatting
              application.   The  file is called a translation spec, which specifies how the tags
              are to be translated. See transpec(5).  By  convention,  names  for  file  use  the
              suffix .ts, for translation spec.

       -s file
              Specifies  a  file  of mappings for SDATA entities in the instance.  The file is of
              two columns, separated by one or  more  tabs.   Spaces  can  not  be  used  as  the
              separator  because  spaces  are allowable as the content of the columns.  The first
              column is the entity data to map, the second is the string that the data is  mapped
              to.   The entity data is typically what is found in public ISO entity sets, such as
              the General Technical and Publishing  sets.   The  mappings  are  specific  to  the
              formatting  application used.  For example, to map the em dash entity, [mdash ], in
              the Publishing set to the TeX representation, the first column would  be  [mdash  ]
              and the second column ---.  Lines beginning with a # are comments, and are ignored.
              Empty lines are also ignored.

       -c file
              Specifies a file of string mappings for characters in the instance.  The file is of
              two  columns,  separated  by  white  space.  The first is the character to map, the
              second is the string that the character is mapped to.  The mappings are specific to
              the  formatting  application  used.  Lines beginning with a # are comments, and are
              ignored. Empty lines are also ignored.

       -d     strip newline at the beginning of data records

       -f length
              Set the threshold for the length, in characters, of an <Entry>, over  which  it  is
              called a block of filled text, to length.

       -o file
              Write  all  output  (except  error  and warning messages) to file file. By default,
              output goes to stdout.

       -h     Print a text representation of the hierarchy of the instance elements.  The  deeper
              an  element  is  in  the  tree,  the  more  it is indented. The data content is not
              printed.

       -u     Print a summary of the usage of each element in the  instance.   Information  given
              includes attributes, number of children, and depth in the hierarchy.

       -S     Print some statistics about element usage in the instance, including how often each
              element is used and how much PCDATA is contained.

       -x     Print the context of each element in the instance, from each element to the root of
              the document tree.

       -v     Validate  the  SGML instance based on the set of constraints or descriptions in the
              transpec file.  This flags tells instant to turn off normal  output,  leaving  only
              diagnostics.

       -l directory
              Try to read the translation specs or other files from in the directory directory if
              not found in the current directory.  This is called  the  library  directory.   The
              environment variable TPT_LIB may also be used to specify this.

       -b     Interactive  browser  mode.  The user is prompted for actions, which include moving
              among and examining the various nodes in the hierarchy of the instance,  displaying
              information about them, etc.

       -I     List  the  IDs of all elements in the instance that have an ID.  The format is more
              suitable for other programs than humans.  Lines show the ID, element GI,  filename,
              and  line,  separated  by  colons.   (This depends on the -l option to nsgmls which
              provide filenames and line numbers.)

       -i id  When translating the instance, begin processing at  the  element  whose  ID  is  id
              instead of the topmost element.

       -D variable=value
              Define the variable variable with value value.

       -W     Do not print warning messages.

       -H     Print a help message briefly describing the options.

       file   Read  the  instance  from  the file file.  This is expected to be the output of the
              program nsgmls.  If not specified, instant reads the  instance  from  its  standard
              input.

       In some cases it makes no sense to combine options.  This is especially true if one of the
       options is to perform a translation. No checking is done for this.

Interactive Browser

       These are the commands to the interactive browser:

       cd args ...
              Change to a different element in the hierarchy.   cd  id  id  will  change  to  the
              element  whose  ID is id.  cd N will change to the Nth child element of the current
              element.  Several values of N may be specified,  so  the  program  will  change  to
              successively  descending elements in the hierarchy.  The string .. may appear for N
              to move up a level in the hierarchy (like in a unix  file  system).   A  /  may  be
              specified for N to change to the top of the hierarchy.

       cont   Print the context of each element.

       data N Show the data content (PCDATA, RCDATA, and DATA) of child node N.

       find spec
              Find paths to elements matching spec, where spec may be one of:

              parent gi
                     Find all elements whose parent element is gi.

              child gi
                     Find all elements which have a child element gi.

              gi gi  Find all elements whose name is gi.

              attr name value
                     Find all elements that have a attribute name that have a value value.

       id ID  Show location of element whose ID is ID.  If ID is ?, it will list all IDs with the
              paths to them.

       ls     List information about the current element in the hierarchy.  This includes element
              name,  line  number  in  instance,  context,  attributes  and  their  values, child
              elements, data directly within this element, and the order of the  current  element
              among its siblings.

       q relation element
              Report  whether  or  not the current element has the relation relation to the named
              element element.  Values of relation are the same as  for  _followrel  in  transpec
              reference page.

       stat   Show statistics about the hierarchy.

       sum    Show a tag usage summary about the hierarchy.

       tran transpec outfile
              Write  translated  output using trans spec transpec to file outfile.  If outfile is
              not specified, output is sent to stdout.

       tree   Print a textual representation of the  hierarchy  of  the  instance,  where  deeper
              elements are indented more.

       where  Show current position in the hierarchy.

       <control-D>
              Exits the program.

       The  stat,  sum, tree, cont commands take an optional first argument (of any value), which
       means to only consider the entire instance instead  of  the  hierarchy  from  the  current
       element.

Files

       file.ts
              Translation specification file.

       file.sdata
              SDATA entity mapping file.

       file.cmap
              Character mapping file.

Related Information

       transpec(5), nsgmls(1), Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), ISO 8879.

                                             user cmd                                  instant(1)