The primary web site for Kaptain is here. You can download the latest version, documentation and Kaptain grammars there.
Kaptain is based on Qt 2.1 and KDE 2. However, it can be compiled without the KDE libraries.
In order to compile and install Kaptain on your system, type the following in the base directory of the Kaptain distribution:
% ./configure
% make
% make install
If you don't have kdelibs
installed, run ./configure --disable-kde
. This should work if the QTDIR
variable points to the base Qt directory. (or specify qt directory for the
configure
script by adding the parameter --with-qt-dir=/usr/lib/qt2
or wherever you installed qt2)
Since Kaptain uses autoconf
you should have not trouble
compiling it.
Should you run into problems please report them to the the author
Terék Zsolt
if you have found some bugs in kaptain, please send me the grammar script which caused the error. Thanks.
Kaptain must read the grammar to show up the dialog. You can either specify the file containing grammatical rules or write it to the standard input. For example
% kaptain example.kaptain
On the other hand, if the Kaptain grammar example
contains the comment
#!/usr/bin/kaptain
on the first line, and is executable, you simply type example
at the prompt.
If the first parameter is --test
or -t
,the program won't execute
the generated command, just write it to the standard output. It is useful
for test purpuses for grammar writers.
Another flag is --verbose
or -V
, and it makes kaptain
print out every rule it reads. You can check where the parser failed, if
the grammar contains errors.
If no input files are specified, Kaptain reads the grammar from the standard input.
An other way to use kaptain is to start /usr/bin/kaptainshell
, which shows up the grammars located
in /usr/share/grammars
and the user can choose from that list. Kaptainshell
itself is a simple kaptain grammar script (in 241 bytes).