Re: ANN: Ada source code decorator

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@acm.org> writes:

> There seems to be a lot missing. Remember that I have never used XML
> in an application, but my impression was that it's supposed to be a
> self-documenting format.

About as much as Ada is ..

>                          So, for example, I would expect the various
> identifiers to be labeled more specifically; "variable_identifier",
> "type_identifier". Or have names that match the ASIS query that
> returned them.

The scheme I adopted was to use the ASIS enumeration names as far as
possible: a snippet of the code is

      case Asis.Elements.Element_Kind (Element) is

         when A_Defining_Name =>           -- Asis.Declarations
            State.Current :=
            DOM.Core.Nodes.Append_Child
            (State.Current,
             DOM.Core.Documents.Create_Element
               (State.Document,
                To_Tag_Name
                       (Defining_Name_Kinds'Image
                          (Asis.Elements.Defining_Name_Kind (Element)))));
            Tmp :=
              DOM.Core.Nodes.Append_Child
              (State.Current,
               DOM.Core.Documents.Create_Text_Node
                 (State.Document,
                  +Asis.Declarations.Defining_Name_Image (Element)));

where To_Tag_Name strips a leading A_ or An_. So if -- for example, I
don't know if this is exactly right -- my output contained
<defining_identifier>Basis</defining_identifier> that would be because
I got an element of Element_Kind = A_Defining_Name with
Defining_Name_Kind = A_Defining_Identifier. Perhaps I should have said
eg

  <defining_name.defining_identifier>?

or, probably better,

  <defining_name kind="defining_identifier">?