In MetaEdit+, generators are used for multiple purposes: code
and documentation generation, generator-based text fields in symbols, identifier
generators for non-property types, and to fetch subobjects and their subsymbols
for template symbol elements. All these generators are written in the MetaEdit+
Reporting Language, MERL. The code and report generators associated with
specific Graph types are edited and managed with the Generator Editor (see
Section
5.3) and Generator Debugger (see
5.4).
We will first show how to create (
5.1.1) and execute and debug (
5.1.2) a simple generator. The primer to
MERL in Section
5.2 will quickly bring
you up to speed on the approach that MERL takes, and is worth reading even for
those familiar with generation and other programming languages. The Generator
Editor and Debugger are described in Sections
5.3 and
5.4. The individual MERL commands are
explained in detail in Chapter
6, with a
quick reference in Section
6.8.