Discuss: remove ctext importer and writer?

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Edward K. Ream

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Sep 13, 2023, 11:58:03 AM9/13/23
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Does anyone know anything about the ctext file format? Googling ctext yields no relevant hits.

The ctext importer came to my attention today because of #3558, which lists various importer-related "quirps".  The most serious concerns ctext, but I have no clue about the ctext format.

Unless someone speaks up I shall send the ctext importer and writer to the attic.

Edward

Edward K. Ream

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Sep 13, 2023, 12:09:53 PM9/13/23
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On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 10:58 AM Edward K. Ream <edre...@gmail.com> wrote:

Does anyone know anything about the ctext file format? Googling ctext yields no relevant hits.

Hmm. The docstring for the ctext importer class is:

QQQ
Read/Write simple text files with hierarchy embedded in headlines::

    Leading text in root node of subtree

    Etc. etc.

    ### A level one node #####################################

    This would be the text in this level one node.

    And this.

    ### Another level one node ###############################

    Another one

    #### A level 2 node ######################################

    See what we did there - one more '#' - this is a subnode.

Leading / trailing whitespace may not be preserved.  '-' and '/'
are used in place of '#' for SQL and JavaScript.
QQQ

The docstring might suffice to fix the quirp, but does not explain where this convention came from.

Unless I hear howls of outrage, I'd like to remove support for this bizarre format.

Edward

jkn

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Sep 13, 2023, 12:29:26 PM9/13/23
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I think I only know about it through reading through the importer for 'ctext'
some time ago and wondering 'where did that format come from'?   ;-)

so I for one have no reason to keep it

J^n

Edward K. Ream

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Sep 13, 2023, 12:38:13 PM9/13/23
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On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 11:29 AM jkn <jkn...@nicorp.f9.co.uk> wrote:
I think I only know about it through reading through the importer for 'ctext'
some time ago and wondering 'where did that format come from'?   ;-)

so I for one have no reason to keep it

Thanks for your feedback.

Edward

Thomas Passin

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Sep 13, 2023, 1:09:29 PM9/13/23
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There's a "ctext" related to the Chinese Text Project, but it's nothing to do with this one.

Segundo Bob

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Sep 13, 2023, 2:02:16 PM9/13/23
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I know nothing about it. But this link might be relevant:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ctext-modern-c-text-processing-library-anton-milev

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Segundo Bob
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Edward K. Ream

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Sep 13, 2023, 2:09:19 PM9/13/23
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On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 1:02 PM Segundo Bob <segun...@gmail.com> wrote:
I know nothing about it.  But this link might be relevant:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ctext-modern-c-text-processing-library-anton-milev

Thanks for this link. However, I think the ctext importer is more than a decade old.

Edward

Edward K. Ream

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Sep 13, 2023, 2:11:26 PM9/13/23
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On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 12:09 PM Thomas Passin <tbp1...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There's a "ctext" related to the Chinese Text Project, but it's nothing to do with this one.

Right.  I thought perhaps ctext was related to cweb, but that doesn't seem to be true either.

It looks like ctext, whatever it is, is obsolete.

Edward


Thomas Passin

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Sep 13, 2023, 2:13:59 PM9/13/23
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Whatever it is, it could be apparently replaced by Markdown, which also uses ## signs to denote header levels.

Edward K. Ream

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Sep 13, 2023, 2:27:15 PM9/13/23
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On Wednesday, September 13, 2023 at 1:13:59 PM UTC-5 Thomas wrote:

Whatever it is, it could be apparently replaced by Markdown, which also uses ## signs to denote header levels.

I agree.

I've just moved the code to the attic. The diffs (gnxs) say that Terry Brown wrote the importer and writer. The gnxs say I wrote a feeble test case, which is now in the attic too.

I have no memory of the rationale for this format. I think it's best to discard it.

Edward
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