In this document we define certain terms that we use in the documentation and are not general terms.
A generator is a class, which implements the javax0.geci.api.Generator interface.
Generators usually generate code, but it is not a must.
There are generators that only collect information from the source code and make it available for other code generators.
A segment is a series of lines in the source code where generated code is inserted. When a segment already has some code then these will be overwritten during code generation.
Each segment has an identifier that has to be unique within a single file.
A segment starts and ends with special lines that are recognized by segment split helpers.
When using Java::Geci with Java then the segments are editor-fold HTML comment like segments, as in the following example:
<!--editor-fold id="segmentId"-->
anything here is the content of the segment
<!--/editor-fold-->A segment split helper is a class that helps the framework to split a source code into a series of blocks that contain manual code and segments.
Segment split helpers apply regular expressions and code logic to find the start and the end of a segment.
The term snippet is used in the document management generators. A snippet is a piece of text, which is copied from the source code and inserted into a documentation file after some transformation.
A snippet usually starts ends with special lines that are recognized by regular expressions used in Snippet Collectors.
A snippet collector is a generator that reads the source files and copies the snippets from the source into a memory structure (called snippet store). Other document management handling generators later use this store to insert documentation in formation into documentation files into segments.
A Java generator either creates a new class, or it injects code into an already existing class. This class (into which the generator injects code) is called target class.