--- name: "instant" section: "1" platform: "linux" package: "docbook-to-man" version: "1:2.0.0-48" release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/instant" --- # instant(1) manipulates ESIS from parsed SGML instance ## Name instant - manipulates ESIS from parsed SGML instance ## Synopsis **instant** \[ **-bhuvxHISW** \] \[ **-t** *file*\] \[ **-s** *file*\] \[ **-c** *file*\] \[ **-o** *file*\] \[ **-D** *variable***=***value* ...\] \[ **-i** *id*\] \[ **-l** *directory*\] \[*file*\] ## Description The **instant** program manipulates an SGML document instance in a variety of ways, including translating into a form suitable for a formatting application and printing information about this instance. Input to **instant** is the output of **onsgmls**, whose format is called Element Structure Information Set (ESIS). ## Flags The following are the possible command line options to **instant**. Output is sent to the standard output, except where otherwise noted.\ - **-t** *file* Translate the SGML instance to another form, usually suitable for a formatting application. The *file* is called a translation spec, which specifies how the tags are to be translated. See [**transpec**(5)](/transpec/5.md). By convention, names for *file* use the suffix **.ts**, for *translation spec*. - **-s** *file* Specifies a file of mappings for SDATA entities in the instance. The file is of two columns, separated by one or more tabs. Spaces can *not* be used as the separator because spaces are allowable as the content of the columns. The first column is the entity data to map, the second is the string that the data is mapped to. The entity data is typically what is found in public ISO entity sets, such as the General Technical and Publishing sets. The mappings are specific to the formatting application used. For example, to map the em dash entity, **\[mdash \]**, in the Publishing set to the TeX representation, the first column would be **\[mdash \]** and the second column **---**. Lines beginning with a **#** are comments, and are ignored. Empty lines are also ignored. - **-c** *file* Specifies a file of string mappings for characters in the instance. The file is of two columns, separated by white space. The first is the character to map, the second is the string that the character is mapped to. The mappings are specific to the formatting application used. Lines beginning with a **#** are comments, and are ignored. Empty lines are also ignored. - **-d** strip newline at the beginning of data records - **-f** *length* Set the threshold for the length, in characters, of an \, over which it is called a block of filled text, to *length*. - **-o** *file* Write all output (except error and warning messages) to file *file*. By default, output goes to stdout. - **-h** Print a text representation of the hierarchy of the instance elements. The deeper an element is in the tree, the more it is indented. The data content is not printed. - **-u** Print a summary of the usage of each element in the instance. Information given includes attributes, number of children, and depth in the hierarchy. - **-S** Print some statistics about element usage in the instance, including how often each element is used and how much PCDATA is contained. - **-x** Print the context of each element in the instance, from each element to the root of the document tree. - **-v** Validate the SGML instance based on the set of constraints or descriptions in the transpec file. This flags tells **instant** to turn off normal output, leaving only diagnostics. - **-l** *directory* Try to read the translation specs or other files from in the directory *directory* if not found in the current directory. This is called the library directory. The environment variable *TPT\_LIB* may also be used to specify this. - **-b** Interactive browser mode. The user is prompted for actions, which include moving among and examining the various nodes in the hierarchy of the instance, displaying information about them, etc. - **-I** List the IDs of all elements in the instance that have an ID. The format is more suitable for other programs than humans. Lines show the ID, element GI, filename, and line, separated by colons. (This depends on the **-l** option to **onsgmls** which provide filenames and line numbers.) - **-i** *id* When translating the instance, begin processing at the element whose ID is *id* instead of the topmost element. - **-D** *variable***=***value* Define the variable *variable* with value *value*. - **-W** Do not print warning messages. - **-H** Print a help message briefly describing the options. - *file* Read the instance from the file *file*. This is expected to be the output of the program **onsgmls**. If not specified, **instant** reads the instance from its standard input.\ In some cases it makes no sense to combine options. This is especially true if one of the options is to perform a translation. No checking is done for this. ## Interactive Browser These are the commands to the interactive browser:\ - **cd** *args ...* Change to a different element in the hierarchy. **cd** **id** *id* will change to the element whose ID is *id*. **cd** *N* will change to the *N*th child element of the current element. Several values of *N* may be specified, so the program will change to successively descending elements in the hierarchy. The string **..** may appear for *N* to move up a level in the hierarchy (like in a unix file system). A **/** may be specified for *N* to change to the top of the hierarchy. - **cont** Print the context of each element. - **data** *N* Show the data content (PCDATA, RCDATA, and DATA) of child node N. - **find** *spec* Find paths to elements matching *spec*, where *spec* may be one of:\ - **parent** *gi* Find all elements whose parent element is *gi*. - **child** *gi* Find all elements which have a child element *gi*. - **gi** *gi* Find all elements whose name is *gi*. - **attr** *name* *value* Find all elements that have a attribute *name* that have a value *value*. - **id** *ID* Show location of element whose ID is *ID*. If *ID* is **?**, it will list all IDs with the paths to them. - **ls** List information about the current element in the hierarchy. This includes element name, line number in instance, context, attributes and their values, child elements, data directly within this element, and the order of the current element among its siblings. - **q** *relation* *element* Report whether or not the current element has the relation *relation* to the named element *element*. Values of *relation* are the same as for **\_followrel** in **transpec** reference page. - **stat** Show statistics about the hierarchy. - **sum** Show a tag usage summary about the hierarchy. - **tran** *transpec* *outfile* Write translated output using trans spec *transpec* to file *outfile*. If *outfile* is not specified, output is sent to stdout. - **tree** Print a textual representation of the hierarchy of the instance, where deeper elements are indented more. - **where** Show current position in the hierarchy. - \<**control-D**\> Exits the program. \ The **stat**, **sum**, **tree**, **cont** commands take an optional first argument (of any value), which means to only consider the entire instance instead of the hierarchy from the current element. ## Files - *file***.ts** Translation specification file. - *file***.sdata** SDATA entity mapping file. - *file***.cmap** Character mapping file.\ ## Related Information [**transpec**(5)](/transpec/5.md), [**onsgmls**(1)](/onsgmls/1.md), Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), ISO 8879.