Splitter options file

#
Splitter options file

The file contains four sections: `<General>`, `<Markers>`, `<SentenceEnd>`, and `<SentenceStart>`.

The `<General>` section contains general options for the splitter: Namely, `AllowBetweenMarkers` and `MaxLines` options. The former may take values 1 or 0 (on/off). The later may be any integer. An example of the `<General>` section is:

    <General>
    AllowBetweenMarkers 0
    MaxLines 0
    </General>

If `AllowBetweenMarkers` is off, a sentence split will never be introduced inside a pair of parenthesis-like markers, which is useful to prevent splitting in sentences such as ``I hate'' (Mary said. Angryly.) ``apple pie''. If this option is on, a sentence end is allowed to be introduced inside such a pair.

`MaxLines` states how many text lines are read before forcing a sentence split inside parenthesis-like markers (this option is intended to avoid infinite loops in case the markers are not properly closed in the text). A value of zero means ``Never split, I'll risk to infinite loops''. Obviously, this option is only effective if `AllowBetweenMarkers` is on.

The `<Markers>` section lists the pairs of characters (or character groups) that have to be considered open-close markers. For instance:

    <Markers>
    " "
    ( )
    { }
    /* */
    </Markers>

The `<SentenceEnd>` section lists which characters are considered as possible sentence endings. Each character is followed by a binary value stating whether the character is an unambiguous sentence endig or not. For instance, in the following example, ``?'' is an unabiguous sentence marker, so a sentence split will be introduced unconditionally after each ``?''. The other two characters are not unambiguous, so a sentence split will only be introduced if they are followed by a capitalized word or a sentence start character.

    <SentenceEnd>
    . 0
    ? 1
    ! 0
    </SentenceEnd>

The `<SentenceStart>` section lists characters known to appear only at sentence beggining. For instance, open question/exclamation marks in Spanish:
`<SentenceStart>`
`¿`
`¡`
`</SentenceStart>`