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| <div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"> |
| <a name="spirit.karma.tutorials.quick_start"></a><a class="link" href="quick_start.html" title="Quick Start">Quick Start</a> |
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| <a name="spirit.karma.tutorials.quick_start.spirit_karma___what_s_that_"></a><h6> |
| <a name="id954914"></a> |
| <a class="link" href="quick_start.html#spirit.karma.tutorials.quick_start.spirit_karma___what_s_that_">Spirit.Karma |
| - what's that?</a> |
| </h6> |
| <p> |
| Throughout the description of <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Karma</em></span> we will |
| try to align ourselves very much with the documentation for <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Qi</em></span>. |
| The reasons are many fold: |
| </p> |
| <div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" type="disc"> |
| <li class="listitem"> |
| <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Karma</em></span> is the counterpart to <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Qi</em></span>. |
| Some people say it's the Yin to <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Qi</em></span>'s Yang. |
| <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Karma</em></span> is generating byte sequences from |
| internal data structures as <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Qi</em></span> is parsing |
| byte sequences into those (very same) internal data structures. |
| </li> |
| <li class="listitem"> |
| Both libraries have an almost identical structure, very similar semantics, |
| and are both built using identical tools. Both libraries implement |
| a language casting the specifics of their domain (parsing and generating) |
| into a simple interface. |
| </li> |
| </ul></div> |
| <p> |
| Why should you use a generator library for such a simple thing as output |
| generation? Programmers have been using <code class="computeroutput"><span class="identifier">printf</span></code>, |
| <code class="computeroutput"><span class="identifier">std</span><span class="special">::</span><span class="identifier">stream</span></code> formatting, or <code class="computeroutput"><span class="identifier">boost</span><span class="special">::</span><span class="identifier">format</span></code> |
| for quite some time. The answer is - yes, for simple output formatting |
| tasks those familiar tools might be a quick solution. But experience shows: |
| as soon as the formatting requirements are becoming more complex output |
| generation is getting more and more challenging in terms of readability, |
| maintainability, and flexibility of the code. Last, but not least, it turns |
| out that code using <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Karma</em></span> runs much faster |
| than equivalent code using either of the 'straight' methods mentioned above |
| (see here for some numbers: <a class="link" href="../performance_measurements/numeric_performance.html" title="Performance of Numeric Generators">Performance |
| of Numeric Generators</a>) |
| </p> |
| <p> |
| You might argue that more complex tasks require more complex tools. But |
| this turns out not to be the case! The whole Spirit library is designed |
| to be simple to use, while being scalable from trivial to very complicated |
| applications. |
| </p> |
| <p> |
| In terms of development simplicity and ease in deployment, the same is |
| true for <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Karma</em></span> as has been described elsewhere |
| in this documentation for <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Qi</em></span>: the entire library |
| consists of only header files, with no libraries to link against or build. |
| Just put the spirit distribution in your include path, compile and run. |
| Code size? Very tight, essentially comparable to hand written code. |
| </p> |
| <p> |
| The <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Karma</em></span> tutorials are built in a walk through |
| style, starting with elementary things growing step by step in complexity. |
| And again: keep in mind output generation is the exact opposite of parsing. |
| Everything you already learnt about parsing using <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Qi</em></span> |
| is applicable to generating formatted output using <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Karma</em></span>. |
| All you have to do is to look at <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Karma</em></span> as being |
| a mirror image of <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Qi</em></span>. |
| </p> |
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| <td align="right"><div class="copyright-footer">Copyright © 2001-2010 Joel de Guzman, Hartmut Kaiser<p> |
| Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying |
| file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at <a href="http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt" target="_top">http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt</a>) |
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