Introduction

Block Method may specify a scope of a set of methods. Start method is the beginning of a block method. Snaml for Java specifies the satrt method name with the underscore prefix such as '_method( attribute );'. A start method may have zero or one argument called attributes. End method is the end of a block method. The method name has the underscore postfix such as 'method_();'. An end method has no argument. The methods between the start and end methods are called content.

Attribute is a list of key/value pairs separated by whitespace. A pair has the format key='value' where key must be a character string (include letters, digits, hypen, period, and underscore). The value may be any of strings or variables. The single quote ' ' groups the value. A key that is not defined as an attribute of a start method will be ignored. A non-declared key will be assigned to its default value when a start method is invocated.

Block methods may be nested. A difference between the block method and regular Java method is that the attributes of a block method may be inherited. The inner methods in the content of a block method may inherite the attributes of the outer block method. A method in the content is called a child of the outer block method. In contrast, the outer block method is a parent of the inner methods. Finally, the block methods should be properly paired. For example,

_anchor( "title='Hello'" );
  _b();
    quote( "an example of block command" );
  b_();
anchor_();

Empty method is a special case of the block method where the content is empty. A special syntax with double underscore prefix such as '__method( attribute );' can represent empty method in short. It is convenient for a parser to check a program for empty method since there is no end method is expected. For example,

This simple Snaml for Java program displays a picture with the title 'Hello Snaml'.

import packages. neatware.snaml is the Snaml package.

import java.io.*
import javax.servlet.*
import neatware.snaml.*

HelloSnaml class extends from XHTML class in the Sanml package.

public void class HelloSnaml extends XHTML
{

The page method is inherited from the XHTML method. The web page initialization has been done in the XHTML object.

  public void page() throws ServletException, IOException
  {

uses xml 1.0 and UTF8 encoding. doctype uses XHTML strict DTD specification.

     __pi( "xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'" );
     __doctype( "html PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN'"
       + " 'http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd'" );

xhtml header specifies xml namespace and language. quote writes a string on title.

     _html( "xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml '"
          + "xml:lang='en' lang='en'" );
     _head();
       _title();
         quote( "Hello Snaml" );
       title_();
     head_();

In the xhtml body a web page displays a hello.gif picture and writes a string.

     _body();
       __img( "src='hello.gif' alt='hello'" );
       quote( "Hello Snaml for Java!" );
     body_();
     html_();
  }
}