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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)