Is the Gnu diction Package is bison and flex Candidate=

[Hans (Req man)]

Hi!

Currently I am a user of the Gnu diction program. I am translating 
diction and style. Release 1.11 RC3 provides Dutch messages and can 
check the diction and style of Dutch documents. From the Gnu website 
http://directory.fsf.org/GNU/diction.html:

"diction - Checks text for readability and bad usage

This program includes both 'diction' and 'style'. 'Diction' identifies 
wordy and commonly misused phrases; 'style' analyzes surface 
characteristics of a document, including sentence length and other 
readability measures.

While these programs cannot help you structure a document well, they can 
help to avoid poor wording and compare the readability of your document 
with others. Both commands support English and German documents."

While translating and editing the diction package I noticed that style 
is rather a lexical analyzer, and diction is more of a parser. 
Specifications are entered either in the C sources or in companying 
database. When you want to add a phrase you must be sure to spell out 
all possible instances. Two examples:

example 1: be able to
=========

Identifier            Beginner    Instances            Advised user action
----------            --------    ---------            -------------------
to be able to         Yes         be able to           (weak definition)
to be able to         Yes         am able to           (weak definition)
to be able to         Yes         are able to          (weak definition)
to be able to         Yes         was able to          (weak definition)
to be able to         Yes         were able to         (weak definition)

example 2: along the line
=========
Identifier            Beginner    Instances            Advised user action
----------            --------    ---------            -------------------
along the line        No          along the line       (avoid)
along the line        No          along the line of    like (or omit)
along the line        No          along the lines      (avoid)
along the line        No          along the lines of   like (or omit)
along the line        No          along these lines    (overworked 
phrase, avoid)
along the line        No          along those lines    (avoid)

Beginner indicates errors usually made by people not fluent in the language.

This spelling out all possibilities brought to my mind the usage of flex 
and bison in one of my projects in the early nineties:

Generalization example 1:
1. <form of 'to be'>'able to'                          /* I am able to 
... */
2. <form of 'to be'><some text>'able to                /* were yo able 
to ... */

Generalization of example 2:
1. 'along'(<the> | <these>)(line | lines)(of | NIL)    /* along the line 
of */

Currently the three languages together check about 1,000 phrases. Only 
one language can be active at any time. If the language is unknown then 
only language independent checks can be executed (like the counting of 
sentences and words).

Now my question: How much work is it to specify this type of 'complex' 
phrases in flex and bison?

Any suggestion is appreciated.

Kind regards,

Hans Lodder