InScript

I’ve been tinkering away on a WordPress plugin idea I’ve had, and it’s now finished and available for download.

It’s a bit of a complicated plugin to explain fully, but the core effect is very simple: it is an expandable pattern matching script engine. Phew, what a mouthful!

Basically it means that you can insert patterns into posts, or have patterns applied to dates, titles, even the whole blog. These patterns can contain variables and functions that, when InScript processes them, will insert or manipulate the data as the page is being generated.

For example, I can insert %%post_date%% into my post and it will automatically get converted into the date of the current post: %%post_date%%. I can modify this further by changing the format: %%post_date [format=Y M]%%, and even use it as the parameter for other InScript functions: posted

One nice feature of the plugin is that it allows you to change the formatting of paragraphs, words, and even characters. This means you can use Textile formatting on one paragraph, Markdown on the next, the default WordPress on the third, and nothing on the fourth.

Of course, the plugin is not just limited to that. You can get a better taste for it over at the plugin page. Did you notice the date this post was created? You can apply these patterns to items on individual posts, or on every post.