r.*******@gmail.com writes:
Can anyone tell me whether there exists a tool that would allow
me to define such a language,
To define such a language, a specification would have to be
written for its syntax and semantics. This requires a pencil
or a text editor or so.
and the xml elements that the "informal" elements are intended
to represent, and emit, say, a perl script for converting
documents written in the informal into XML documents.
A major part of the work should be making the design decisions
and writing the specification.
The best approach might be to use one of the existing
plain-text-markup-languages. If the source code for a
converter is available for them, it might be used and
modified to derive a similar language.
The plain-text-markup-languages I am aware of are:
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html http://www.python.org/sigs/doc-sig/stext.html http://textism.com/tools/textile/ http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/ http://tikiwiki.org/tiki-print.php?page=RFCWiki http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ http://www.maplefish.com/todd/aft.html http://www.xmlmind.com/aptconvert.html
From the viewpoint of computer science, any plain-text
markup language is a "formal language".