Home The syntax of UDO A short example Structuring

Basics


Let's talk about text, Baby!

UDO expects a text file that you can edit with every ASCII editor. You should use only printable characters. That means you shouldn't use any characters below "space" except ASCII 9 (tab), ASCII 10 (line feed) and ASCII 13 (carriage return). A line of a source file shouldn't contain more than 512 characters.

UDO layouts the destination file itself. That means that it fills in spaces between words and lines between paragraphs:

Words
are characters that are divided by one or more blank or tab. UDO prints words divided by one blank.
 
Paragraphs
consist of words. Paragraphs are divided by one or more empty line(s) or UDO commands. UDO divides paragraphs by one empty line when printing the destination file.
 

You can compose the source file using different charsets. UDO supports the following character sets:

When UDO starts the conversion it excepts the character set that is used on the current operating system. If you want to convert source files that use characters from a different operating system you have to tell it to UDO by using the upper commands. Additional information can be found in the chapter "Special characters".

Commands, switches and placeholders

Commands: An UDO command begins with a single "!" at the beginning of a line, it may be indented by spaces or tabs. A command tells UDO to do something where you used it e.g. to output the table of contents with !tableofcontents.
 
Switches: An UDO switch begins with a single "!" at the beginning of a line, it may be indented by spaces or tabs. A switch tells UDO how to handle some commands e.g. !language english that switches the language of the destination file to English so that UDO will print "Appendix" instead of "Anhang".
 
Placeholders: An UDO placeholder begins with a "(!" and ends with a single ")". A placeholder is replaced by certain characters e.g. `(!B)' by `{\bf' for LaTeX. You can use placeholders wherever you want.
 

Comments

A source file can contain comments. UDO ignores a line if the first character of a line is a `#'. This character mustn't be indented by spaces or tabs!

Inside a verbatim environment or raw environment you cannot use comments because UDO prints every line of such an environment.

Preamble and main part

Each source file has to contain a preamble and a main part.

In the preamble you define general information about the source file like information for the title page or the switches that tell UDO how to convert the source file. The preamble ends with the command !begin_document.

The main part contains the text structured into chapters, sections or subsections. The main part ends with the command !end_document.

Environments

An environment is a part of a source file that has to be converted in a special way. Environments will be started with !begin_ and finished with !end_. The commands have to be the first words of a line. They may be indented by spaces or tabs.

UDO offers you a large range of environments that will help you to layout your text and to insert special commands:

appendix environment: appendix
center environment: centred text
description environment: descriptions
document environment: documentation contents
enumerate environment: enumerations
flushleft environment: left justified text
flushright environment: right justified text
itemize environment: itemizations
quote environment: indented text
raw environment: special commands for the destination format
table environment: tables
verbatim environment: preformatted text
xlist environment: lists

How the text of an environment is formatted you can find in the according sections.


Home The syntax of UDO A short example Structuring