2011/1/25 Alex Brollo &lt;alex.brollo(a)gmail.com&gt; Just to test effectiveness of such a strange idea, I added some formal section tags into a 6 Kby text section.txt, then I wrote a simple script to create a "data area" , this is the result (a python dictionary into a html comment code) appended to the section.txt file: <!--SECTIONS:{'<section begin=1 />': [(152, 990), (1282, 2406), (4078, 4478)], '<section begin=6 />': [(19, 115)], '<section begin=2 />': [(2443, 2821), (2859, 3256)], '<section begin=4 />': [(1555, 1901)], '<section begin=5 />': [(171, 477)], '<section begin=3 />': [(3704, 4042)]}--> then I run these lines from python idle: f=open("section.txt").read() indici=eval(find_stringa(f,"<!--SECTIONS:","-->")) t="" for i in indici["<section begin=1 />"]: t+=f[i[0]:i[1]] As you see the code, for 1000 times: opens the file and loads it selects "data area" (find_stringa is a personal, string seach tool to get strings), and converts it into a dictionary retrieves all the text inside multiple sections named "1" (the worst case in the list: section 1 has three instances: [(152, 990), (1282, 2406), (4078, 4478)] Time to do 1000 cicles: more or less, 3 seconds on a far from powerful pc. :-) Fast, in my opinion! So, it can be done, and it runs, in an effective way too. Doesn't it? Alex

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Platonides &lt;Platonides(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: It was done this way in order to allow overlapping sections: LST was created so arbitrary parts of a document on Wikisource can be quoted while retaining a direct link to the original document as it continues to be edited. Basically, the section markers are permanent markers for the source of a copy-and-paste operation. One person might be copying from paragraph 1 to paragraph 4; another might copy from paragraph 3 to paragraph 5; your page structure looks like this: [page] [section-open 1/] [para 1/] <!-- in section 1 only --> [para 2/] <!-- in section 1 only --> [section-open 2/] [para 3/] <!-- in both section 1 and 2 --> [para 4/] <!-- in both section 1 and 2 --> [section-close 1/] [para 5/] <!-- in section 2 only --> [section-close 2/] [/page] Since the LST sections overlap, they don't really fit well in the hierarchical structures that the preprocessor deals in except as standalone start/end markers. *BUT* ... it's probably possible to actually redo things to use that above structure in a sensible way, instead of doing text regexes: iterate through the node tree: if found desired section start node: start saving our spot if found desired section end node: if start node was at same level: grab everything in between RETURN that to upstream parser else: find the closed common parent node of start and end build a node tree that has the parts of the start's parent before the start trimmed, and the parts of the end's parent after the end trimmed RETURN that to upstream parser One could also pull the markers out of the original text and store them as separate metadata in some way, which seems to be part of the suggestions earlier in thread. The main problem here is that we could easily end up losing track of the markers during editing; we have no persistent identity for pieces of text, so if there's not a visible node in there for editors to move & copy along with their alterations, they not be able to persist automatically. -- brion