Regular Expression

2005-06-10 20:54  re      [permalink]

RE, short for Regular Expression is a tool to build advanced structures that use, among other things, Regular Expressions to transform text. I didn't spend too much time thinking about a decent name for the application and a first version only operated on the clipboard (and was called CBRE: Clipboard Regular Expression), so I got stuck with 'Regular Expression'. Another rule I broke is that you can't really operate it with the keyboard only. In return there is a really nifty drag-and-drop way of moving items around and connecting them, really a nice way to visualise the structure you're working on, and easy to have more items than needed around when building or debugging.

Starter's guide:
» Download and install RE_setup.exe (~1.8MB), and have the wizard start RE. Hit the 'Register Regular Expression data file type' button on the settings dialogs. This registers the .rxe file format with Windows to open the files easily.
» The application starts with an empty workspace, use the Add menu on the main-menu, or use the right-click menu in the workspace that has all the items also. Pick an item, e.g. Input/Output > Clipboard, and another, e.g. Input/Output > Viewer. Now drag from one of the sunken rectagles, called linkpoints, to the other to establish a link. If you now hit Run, the text-contents of the clipboard, if any, are shown in the Viewer.
» To move bigger structures around, drag on the open workspace, to get a running ants rectangle to select multiple items. When a structure is bigger than your screen and you need to scroll, hold Ctrl down and drag the workspace around.

Update 2014-01-01: This project is now open-source! https://github.com/stijnsanders/RE

RE_setup.exe (~1.8MB)

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