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Regularized Form Phrase

A Regularized Form Phrase is a regularized text that is derived from, and represents a form phrase. They typically appear in the formPhrases field of an MRG entry.

Purpose​

The purpose of having regularized form phrases is that they

  1. facilitate machine lookups of MRG entries in an MRG, and
  2. can be used as part of a markdown link, particularly as a part of a term identifier that is used in term refs.

Need for Regularizing Form Phrases​

There are two situation in which a form phrase needs to be converted into a regularized text (i.e., a regularized form phrase):

  1. When constructing an MRG entry from a curated text. In this case, the form phrases thjat are the elements of the formPhrases field of the header of a curated text must be converted into regularized form phrases that before putting them into the formPhrases field of the corresponding MRG entry. Details are given in Constructing a Provisional MRG.
  2. When resolving a term ref. In this case, the named capturing group term or showtext of the term ref are expected to be form phrases that need to be converted into regularized form phrases so that they can be used as search key to find the MRG entry to which the term ref refers.

Regularizing Form Phrases​

The process of regularizing form phrases is capable of handling both form phrases, and texts that contain form phrase macros (that can be considered 'shorthand' for a set of related form phrases):

  1. any form phrase macros that are present are processed, thereby expanding the set of form phrases;
  2. the resulting texts are converted into a regularized text

The result is a (expanded) set of regularized texts that represent the form phrases as specified in the curated text. The formPhrases field in the MRG entry is then made as an array of these regularized texts.