Choosing a text editor

For editing the data files, make sure you have a text editor that:

• Saves files with Unix-style line endings. (That is, don't use Notepad.)
• Does not convert straight quotes "..." into curly quotes “...”.
• Inserts a tab character, rather than some number of spaces, when you press the TAB key.

Some text editors support an EditorConfig file, and will read settings from the file provided in this repository. This can help ensure your contributions match the format of existing data files.

Data file format

A data file consists of any number of lines, each of which can contain any number of items or "tokens." Tokens are separated by spaces. For example, this is a line with four tokens in it:

this is a test

If you want to enter a single token that contains spaces, it must be enclosed in double quotation marks "..." to signify that it is a single token. For example, this line contains two tokens:

text "This is a test."

If the text you are trying to enter contains double quotation marks and spaces, you can enclose it in backticks `...` rather than quotation marks:

text `He said, "Hello!"`

Entries in data files are tree structures, where each non-empty line of the file is a "node" of the tree and indentation is used to represent its structure:

"root node"
	"first child node"
	"second child node"
		"child of second child node"
	"third child node"

That is, each data element is presented in the form of a hierarchical outline. In the hierarchy, a sub-item is called a "child," and the item that contains it is its "parent." Two nodes that have the same parent are called "siblings."

Unless otherwise noted, the order in which the lines in a particular data element appears is not important. For example, this:

object
	pos 1.23 4.56
	name "Test"

is completely equivalent to this:

object
	name "Test"
	pos 1.23 4.56

Grammar specifications

In various other wiki pages, I describe the syntax of data files using notation that is similar to how command line arguments are specified in Unix man pages:

• plain text specified keywords that appear verbatim in the file.
• <text in angle brackets> should be replaced with a particular value:
  • pos <x#> <y#> means you could enter something like pos 1.23 4.56 or pos 1000 2000.
    • A "#" sign means the value is expected to be a number.
  • name <name> means you could enter something like name Example or name "A Longer Name".
• vertical | bars represent options you choose between:
  • on (offer | accept | decline) means on offer or on accept or on decline.
• [square brackets] denote optional arguments, and can be nested:
  • item <name> [<count>] means the count is optional (e.g. defaulting to 1 if left out).
  • range [<min> [<mean>]] <max> means range <max> or range <min> <max> or range <min> <mean> <max>.
• ellipses... mean an argument can appear more than once.
  • <value>... means a list of 1 or more values.
  • [<value>...] means a list of 0 or more values.
  • ... on a line by itself means any number of lines can be included here (following the grammar given in previous lines).