Automatically create marcros from templates too

[uliska]

I just realized that it should be possible to create automatic macros from templates too:

• parse the template and collect the field names from the <<<NNN>>> instances.
• (take note of duplicates, sometimes the same content is placed in more than one spot)
• Provide special handling of an <<<opt>>> field that will create an optional argument
• Create arguments for each of the fields (must not exceed 9)
• Create the replacement table according to the collected information

One problem I see is that the macro arguments would be in the order of the appearance of the field in the template, which may not always be desirable.

Similar to the coloring the template can be defined not as a string but as a table (but not an array but an association table) with the following fields:

• template (mandatory)
• color
• macro (name of the macro or 'nomacro' to prevent the automatic generation of a macro)
• arguments (list): Specify the order of arguments by listing the names of the replacement fields in the order in which they should be used as macro arguments

[uliska]

Question: is that worth the effort or can all of this conveniently (better) be handled through the mapping tool?

[uliska]

Answer: No.

Essentially it is not worth the effort since encoding the stuff would be equally complex as encoding a mapping. Plus, the same would be necessary for formatters as well - which behave slightly differently and would thus require yet another round of parsing ...