ANN: AdaBrowse 3.0 with XML support

ANN: AdaBrowse 3.0 with XML support

[Thomas Wolf]

I've published version 3.0 of AdaBrowse. It's available at
the URL

  http://home.tiscalinet.ch/t_wolf/tw/ada95/adabrowse/

in source form and as a pre-built executable for Win NT/2k
and GNAT 3.14p. AdaBrowse is distributed under the terms of
the GPL.

AdaBrowse is known to work on Win NT/2k and Linux. It should
work on other Unices, too.

(For those who don't know it yet: AdaBrowse is an HTML/XML
documentation generator for Ada 95 library unit specifications.)

Changes from the previous version (2.13):

1. AdaBrowse 3.0 now can also generate XML output. The XML file
   contains all the structure, syntax-coloring, and cross-reference
   information present in the HTML, but is far better suited for
   further processing. A DTD for the generated XML is included
   in the distribution.
   
   This makes it possible for anyone to use any odd off-the-shelf
   XML parser toolkit (such as XML/Ada) to parse the XML files
   generated by AdaBrowse and produce whatever format is desired
   from it -- docbook, or texinfo, or anything else. Maybe even
   differently formatted HTML, if you happen not to like the HTML
   generated by AdaBrowse.
   
   This feature saves you the trouble of having to write your own
   Ada 95 parser to collect all the information; and it saves me
   the trouble of providing built-in formatters for any odd format
   out there.
   
2. Some improvements concerning cross-references to implicitly
   inherited subprograms and enumeration literals, and cross-references
   to items from instantiations of nested generics.
   
3. The HTML generator now uses both the line and the column number
   to produce cross-references. Former versions of AdaBrowse used
   only the line number.
   
   This means that HTML files generated by AdaBrowse 3.0 are not
   compatible with files generated by earlier versions. If
   compatibility is needed (say, because for some reason you cannot
   re-generate the documentation with V3.0), use the "-l" command
   line option, which makes V3.0 use only the line number, too.
   
   The XML generated by AdaBrowse always contains both the line and
   the column number.
   
AdaBrowse 3.0 has passed all my regression tests; the new XML
generation has been tested by verifying the generated XML files
to comply to the XML 1.0 DTD included in the distribution using
Xerces 2.0.0.

For information on how to submit bug reports or enhancement proposals,
see the User's Guide included in the distribution.


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Thomas Wolf                          e-mail: t_wolf@angelfire.com