5. Preparing a bovine table for your language

When converting a source file into a nonterminal token stream (parse-tree) it is important to specify rules to accomplish this. The rules are stored in the buffer local variable semantic-toplevel-bovine-table.

While it is certainly possible to write this table yourself, it is most likely you will want to use the BNF converter (see See section 6. Using the BNF converter to make bovine tables.) This is an easier method for specifying your rules. You will still need to specify a variable in your language for the table, however. A good rule of thumb is to call it language-toplevel-bovine-table if it part of the language, or semantic-toplevel-language-bovine-table if you donate it to the semantic package.

When initializing a major-mode for your language, you will set the variable semantic-toplevel-bovine-table to the contents of your language table. semantic-toplevel-bovine-table is always buffer local.

Since it is important to know the format of the table when debugging , you should still attempt to understand the basics of the table.

Please see the documentation for the variable semantic-toplevel-bovine-table for details on its format.

* add more doc here *