Graph characterization of overlap-only TexMECS and other overlapping markup formalisms
Yves Marcoux
Associate professor
Université de Montréal, Canada
Visiting researcher
University of Bergen, Norway
<yves.marcoux@umontreal.ca>
We establish a necessary and sufficient condition for a graph to correspond to the structure of an overlapping markup document, such as a well-formed TexMECS document (not using interrupted or virtual elements). This provides a test for determining if any given graph can be serialized into a TexMECS document—or any other similar language—using only overlapping markup. Such a test may prove useful in DOM-based applications, to determine if an attempted modification operation would preserve the overlap-only serializability of the document. For example, in a document editor using a graph-oriented interface, the user could be warned when a requested operation would prevent the document from being serializable with overlapping elements only. To our knowledge, no such characterization has been given before.