14th installment: home-brewed WOD by e-mail daily

I used to subscribe to an on-line dictionary's word-of-the-day (WOD) program. That entailed signing up, using a valid e-mail address, on their web site so that they would, each day, send a different WOD along with its definition to that address. The service proved to be a bit flaky, however, and the e-mails would sometimes get caught up in my spam filter. So, somewhere along the line--perhaps owing to an e-mail address change--I stopped receiving those educational e-mails.

I'd had in the back of my mind going back to using that service but hadn't signed up again--all the while having a nagging suspicion that it must be possible, using open source tools, to cobble together some way of doing this sort of thing from my own computer, thereby obviating the need to sign up for some service. But could I, with my modest technical acumen, actually pull this off? Read on to find out the result.

Meantime, as I've continued learning my way around GNU/Linux and computing in general, I made some headway in learning how to use the program remind to help me keep track of scheduled appointments and to-do items, even progressing so far as puzzling out how to get my computer to e-mail me my schedule on a regular basis. Perhaps I'll write more about that accomplishment--of which I'm quite proud--in a future entry.

The relevance of that observation to the present post is that I learned how to use the program mail, along with the small msmtp, for sending--when triggered by cron--to myself automated reminder e-mails from my system. So some major ingredients were actually already in place that would allow me finally to implement my own, home-brewed WOD-by-e-mail solution.

This was perhaps the final piece of the puzzle for me, although another crucial piece had been under my nose recently as well, something I ran across while investigating bash functions (I wrote about that a few installments earlier, as you can see here). By adapting one of the bash functions I'd found, I was first able to see the WOD from the command line by simply issuing wod from a command prompt. But I soon began forgetting to do that, which spurred me to consider once again having the WOD somehow e-mailed to me.

Finally, putting two and two together, I realized I could adapt the thrust of that function to my needs by having its output placed into the body of an e-mail that would be automatically sent to me each day at 6 A.M. Following is a description of how I did that.

A key ingredient I have not yet mentioned is the text-mode browser lynx, which produces an html file that gets parsed for material that will be inserted into the e-mail body: and I didn't mention it because lynx and me go back a long, long ways--clear back to the close of the twentieth century, to be precise. The line, swiped straight from the bash function I found on the web, is as follows: lynx -dump http://www.wordthink.com/. That simply "dumps the formatted output of the default document or those specified on the command line to standard output," as the man page tells us--obviously not enough to get a WOD into an e-mail body, but fairly close.

What's needed, then, is, like the bash function, to pipe that output through grep, searching for a certain pattern, then to extract from it the relevant lines which belong in the body of the e-mail. Those results then get piped to mail, which inserts the lines into the body of an e-mail. Below is the full line that I inserted into my crontab file, minus the bit that tells the line to be executed at 6 A.M. daily:

lynx -dump -nonumbers "http://www.wordthink.com/" | grep -A 10 -m 1 "Today's Word of the Day" | mail -s WOD my-addy@my-mail.com

This cron entry tells lynx to dump the page found at the specified link to standard output (whatever that means), then to pipe that through grep, searching for the phrase "Today's Word of the Day." Once that phrase is found, grep is to stop searching (the -m 1 switch--it's to look for only one instance) and to "print" the ten lines preceding (the -A 10 switch), which actually then get piped to mail and become the body of the message. The -s switch specifies what the subject line of the e-mail should be. The -nonumbers switch just tells lynx not to preface the links it finds in the page with numerals between square brackets, which it would otherwise do.

That's about it for this entry. I really do need to write up a remind entry, since I had hoped long and hard to find some scheduling utility that would be no-frills, yet powerful enough to issue me reminders on a regular basis. So that may be next on the agenda for this blog.

Some afterthoughts: piping the output of lynx -dump through grep to extract target text is not ideal, since--if I've read its man page correctly--you are limited to extracting text by line. A problem arises here because the number of lines for the target entries for the WOD can vary day-by-day. As a result, it is likely that either extraneous line(s) will be included on many days, or that some target line(s) will get cut off on other days. Perhaps piping the lynx -dump output through sed or awk--which, as I understand it are both far more flexible when it comes to identifying target text--might be a better solution. But because I am not well-versed in either of those utilities and because extracting the WOD from web sites whose layout may change at any time is a moving target, I am presently not attempting to improve on the method I've described here. I do, on the other hand, welcome suggestions for improving this WOD-by-e-mail solution from any reader who may know those--grep included--or other utilities better than I.

A second addendum to the second installment

I really do have things other than outlining with nano to write about. Really I do. For example, there's the project of installing the Tinycore distribution on some older machines in our computer lab to write about--something I did about a month ago and about which I've already started an article; there's an article about the newsbeuter rss client; one about how to set a weather map as the desktop background; and so forth.  But I've gone on kind of a jag with this nano project lately, and it's complex and foreign enough to me that if I don't record it now, I'm liable to forget important details. So, you're forced to endure another installment on it. :)

What follows may be the last entry on this topic for awhile--we'll see whether any enhancements will be forthcoming soon. If not, I'll probably move on to some of those other important writing projects after this entry. Anyway, on to the topic at hand.

With help from some generous folks over at the linux questions forum, I now have a 3 scripts to share. All the scripts--one written in perl, one in python, and one in awk--add mark-up to the nano outlines I create, mark-up that causes them, once pdflatex has been run on them, to transform into documents that print nicely on paper. I'll paste below the code for each of the three scripts so that, not only will I be less likely to forget how all this works, but also for the possible benefit of others who want to do something similar to what I'm doing. I'll start with the perl script.

The following perl script will add TeX/LaTeX mark-up to the outline files I create with nano. The code can be seen in the following graphic (thanks, blogspot, for making it such a PITA to post code snippets here that I have upload graphic files in order to show them, and sincere thanks to formatmysourcecode for providing the real and effective solution evident below):

#!/usr/bin/perl
# run outl2tex.pl as follows: outl2tex.pl file.outl > file.tex

print <<END
\\documentclass[14pt]{extarticle}
\\usepackage{cjwoutl}
\\usepackage[top=1in,bottom=1in,left=1in,right=1in]{geometry}
\\usepackage{underlin}
\\setlength{\\headsep}{12pt}
\\pagestyle{myheadings}
\\markright{\\today{\\hfill ***Header*title*here***\\hfill}}
\\linespread{1.3} % gives 1.5 line spacing
\\pagestyle{underline}
\\begin{document}
\\begin{outline}[new] 
END
;

while (<>) {
  s/^(\t*)=(.*)/"$1\\outl{".((length $1) + 1)."}$2"/e;
  print;
}

print <<END
\\end{outline}
\\end{document} 
END
;

(the code pasting above was made easy and possible by the source code formatter available at http://formatmysourcecode.blogspot.com/)

As will be obvious, I've named the script outl2tex.pl. As should also be clear, the script is to be run by issuing the command outl2tex.pl name_of_outl_file.outl > name_of_tex_file.tex

The next script--actually scripts--I'll show are the python ones. Why two? Well, it seems python is a rapidly-developing scripting language--something I found out when trying to run the first script that was created for me: it returned an error on my machine. At the same time, it ran fine on the machine of the fellow who created it.

Well, as it turns out, I have version 3.2.2 installed on my machine, while he developed the script on a machine that had version 2.6 on it. So, the following script is the one he originally wrote and that ran on his computer, and one which should work for python version 2.x (he wrote it for 2.6, I ran it successfully with version 2.7, but whether it works for all 2.x versions I cannot say for certain).

#!/usr/bin/python
# for use with versions 2.x of python
# run outl2tex.py as follows: outl2tex.py file.outl > file.tex

import sys
import re

if( len( sys.argv ) != 2 ):
    print >> sys.stderr, "{0} requires one filename to process.".format( sys.argv[0].split('/')[-1] )
    sys.exit( 1)

try:
    rawOutline = open( sys.argv[1], 'r' )
except:
    print >> sys.stderr, "Unable to open {0} for reading".format( sys.argv[1] )
    sys.exit( 2 )

print ( '\\documentclass[14pt]{extarticle}\n'
        '\\usepackage{cjwoutl}\n'
        '\\usepackage[top=1in,bottom=1in,left=1in,right=1in]{geometry}\n'
        '\\usepackage{underlin}
        '\\setlength{\\headsep}{12pt}
        '\\pagestyle{myheadings}\n'
        '\\markright{\\today{\\hfill ***Header*title*here***\\hfill}}\n'
        '\\linespread{1.3} % gives 1.5 line spacing\n'
        '\\pagestyle{underline}
        '\\begin{document}\n'
        '\\begin{outline}[new]\n' )

for inputLine in rawOutline:
    reMatches = re.match( r"(\t*)=(.*)", inputLine )
    if( reMatches == None ):
        print inputLine.rstrip()
    else:
        tabCount = len( reMatches.group(1).split('\t') )
        print "{0}\\outl{{{1:d}}}{2}".format( reMatches.group(1), tabCount, reMatches.group(2) )

print ( '\\end{outline}\n'
        '\\end{document}\n' )

This script is run in essentially the same way as the perl one.

Next, the python 3.x script. As with the 2.x version listed above, I've confirmed that this one runs using version 3.2.2, though I am uncertain whether it can be expected to run under all 3.x versions of python.

#!/usr/bin/python
# for use with versions 3.x of python
# run outl2tex.py as follows: outl2tex.py file.outl > file.tex

import sys
import re

if( len( sys.argv ) != 2 ):
    print ( "{0} requires a filename to process.".format( sys.argv[0].split('/')[-1] ), file=sys.stderr )
    sys.exit( 1 )

try:
    rawOutline = open( sys.argv[1], 'r' )
except:
    print ( "Unable to open {0} for reading".format( sys.argv[1] ), file=sys.stderr )
    sys.exit( 2 )

print ( '\\documentclass[14pt]{extarticle}\n'
        '\\usepackage{cjwoutl}\n'
        '\\usepackage[top=1in,bottom=1in,left=1in,right=1in]{geometry}\n'
        '\\usepackage{underlin}
        '\\setlength{\\headsep}{12pt}
        '\\pagestyle{myheadings}\n'
        '\\markright{\\today{\\hfill ***Header*title*here***\\hfill}}\n'
        '\\linespread{1.3} % gives 1.5 line spacing\n'
        '\\pagestyle{underline}
        '\\begin{document}\n'
        '\\begin{outline}[new]\n' )

for inputLine in rawOutline:
    reMatches = re.match( r"(\t*)=(.*)", inputLine )
    if( reMatches == None ):
        print ( inputLine.rstrip() )
    else:
        tabCount = len( reMatches.group(1).split('\t') )
        print ( "{0}\\outl{{{1:d}}}{2}".format( reMatches.group(1), tabCount, reMatches.group(2) ) )

print ( '\\end{outline}\n'
        '\\end{document}\n' )

Finally, here's the awk script, and it's a long 'un (unfortunately this script is now broken owing to some updates I made to the template file):

#!/usr/bin/awk -f
#
# -v tab=8
#       set tab stops at every eight columns (the default).
#
# -v template=template.tex
#       set the path to the LaTeX template file.
#
# run outl2tex.awk as follows: outl2tex.awk file.outl > file.tex

# Convert tabs to spaces.
function detab(detab_line) {

    if (length(tabsp) != tab) {
    }

    while ((detab_pos = index(detab_line, "\t")) > 0)
        detab_line = substr(detab_line, 1, detab_pos - 1) substr(tabsp, detab_pos % tab) substr(detab_line, detab_pos + 1)

    return detab_line
}

BEGIN {
    # Set tab width to default, unless set on the command line.
    if (tab < 1)
        tab = 8

    # Set template name to default, unless set on the command line.
    if (length(template) < 1)
        template = "template.tex"

    # Record separator is a newline, including trailing whitespace.
    RS = "[\t\v\f ]*(\r\n|\n\r|\r|\n)"

    # Field separator is consecutive whitespace.
    FS = "[\t\v\f ]+"

    # Configuration -- parsed from magic comments.
    split("", config)
    config["tab"] = tab
    config["template"] = template

    # We are not working on anything yet.
    template = ""
    header = ""
    footer = ""
    split("", outline)
    outline[0] = 1
    maxspaces  = 0
    CURR = ""
}

CURR != FILENAME {

    # Empty line?
    if ($0 ~ /^[\t ]*$/)
        next        

    # Configuration comment?
    if ($0 ~ /^%[\t ]*[A-Za-z][0-9A-Za-z]*[\t ]*:/) {
        name = $0
        sub(/^%[\t ]*/, "", name)
        sub(/[\t ]*:.*$/, "", name)
        value = $0
        sub(/^[^:]*:[\t ]*/, "", value)

        # Make the name case-insensitive.
        temp = name
        name = ""
        for (i = 1; i <= length(temp); i++) {
            c = substr(temp, i, 1)
            uc = toupper(c)
            lc = tolower(c)
            if (uc != lc)
                name = name "[" uc lc "]"
            else
                name = name c
        }

        config[name] = value
        next
    }

    # Comment line (skipped)?
    if ($0 ~ /^[\t ]*%/)
        next

    # This is the first line of actual content.
    CURR = FILENAME

    # Set up tabs as currectly specified.
    tab = int(config["tab"])
    tabsp = "                "
    while (length(tabsp) < tab)
        tabsp = tabsp tabsp
    tabsp = substr(tabsp, 1, tab)

    # Have we used a template yet?
    if (length(template) < 1) {
        # No, read it.
        template = config["template"]
        if (length(template) < 1) template = "-"
        OLDRS = RS
        RS = "(\r\n|\n\r|\r|\n)"

        while ((getline line < template) > 0) {
            # Content marker line?
            if (line ~ /^[\t\v\f ]*[Cc][Oo][Nn][Tt][Ee][Nn][Tt][\t\v\f ]*$/)
                break

            # Outline level definition?
            if (line ~ /^%[\t ]*\\outl{/) {
                level = line
                sub(/^[^{]*{/, "", level)
                sub(/}.*$/, "", level)
                level = int(level)

                line = detab(line)
                sub(/\\.*$/, "", line)
                sub(/%/, "", line)
                spaces = length(line)
                outline[spaces] = level
                if (spaces > maxspaces)
                    maxspaces = spaces
                continue
            }

            # Default value definition?
            if (line ~ /^%[\t ]*[A-Z][0-9A-Za-z]*:/) {
                name = line
                sub(/^%[\t ]*/, "", name)
                sub(/[\t ]*:.*$/, "", name)
                value = line
                sub(/^[^:]*:[\t ]*/, "", value)

                # Make the name case-insensitive.
                temp = name
                name = ""
                for (i = 1; i <= length(temp); i++) {
                    c = substr(temp, i, 1)
                    uc = toupper(c)
                    lc = tolower(c)
                    if (uc != lc)
                        name = name "[" uc lc "]"
                    else
                        name = name c
                }

                # If not in config already, set.
                if (!(name in config))
                    config[name] = value
                continue
            }

            # Comment line?
            if (line ~ /^[\t ]*%/)
                continue

            # Ordinary header line. Remove comment.
            sub(/[\t ]%.*$/, "", line)
            header = header line "\n"
        }

        # The rest belongs to footer.
        while ((getline line < template) > 0)
            footer = footer line "\n"

        close(template)
        RS = OLDRS

        # Fill in the outline levels.
        level = outline[0]
        for (spaces = 1; spaces < maxspaces; spaces++)
            if (spaces in outline)
                level = outline[spaces]
            else
                outline[spaces] = level

        # Replace all known ~Name~ in the template.
        for (name in config) {
            gsub("~" name "~", config[name], header)
            gsub("~" name "~", config[name], footer)
        }

        # Replace all other ~Name~ entries in the template with empty strings.
        gsub(/~[A-Z][0-9A-Za-z]*~/, "", header)
        gsub(/~[A-Z][0-9A-Za-z]*~/, "", footer)

        # Emit the template.
        printf("%s", header)
    }
}

/^[\t ]*=/ {
    line = $0
    prefix = index(line, "=") - 1

    # Indentation size in spaces.
    spaces = length(detab(substr(line, 1, prefix)))

    # Find out the outline level for this indentation.
    if (spaces > maxspaces)
        level = outline[maxspaces]
    else
        level = outline[spaces]

    # Add outline level definition.
    line = substr(line, 1, prefix) "\\outl{" level "}" substr(line, prefix + 2)

    printf("%s\n", line)
    next
}

{   printf("%s\n", $0)
}

END {
    printf("%s", footer)
}

As you'll note, this script is quite a bit more complex than the others. It expects, for example, that the TeX template is located in the directory in which the script is run, since it reads values from there (neither the perl nor the python scripts expect such a template file). If it doesn't find the template, it won't process the .outl file.

Furthermore, certain variables can be entered on the command line with this script--unlike the others: the number of spaces that make up a tab space can be fed to it, or an alternate name for the template file--even the title can be set as a command line option using -v title="Title". The title can likewise be entered as a commented line at the top of the outline file after the fashion % Title: A Nice Outline (the percentage sign is how commented lines are to be formed using TeX/LaTeX mark-up).

That about wraps up this second addendum to outlining with nano. The only other addition I can make for the time being is to point out that I've slightly modified the TeX/LaTeX preamble for my outlines, adding in the header, instead of the author's name, mark-up that will print there today's date (\today)--information more apropos for my purposes. See below the slightly modified template:

\documentclass[14pt]{extarticle}
\usepackage{cjwoutl}
\usepackage[top=1in,bottom=1in,left=1in,right=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{underlin}
\setlength{\headsep}{12pt}
\pagestyle{myheadings}
\markright{\today{\hfill ***Header*title*here***\hfill}}
\linespread{1.3} % gives 1.5 line spacing
\pagestyle{underline} %this along with underlin package give hrule in header
\begin{document}
\begin{outline}[new]
%\outl{1}
%       \outl{2}
%               \outl{3}
%                       \outl{4}
%                               \outl{5}
%                                       \outl{6}
%                                               \outl{7}
%                                                       \outl{8}
%                                                               \outl{9}
%                                                                       \outl{10}
\end{outline}
\end{document} 

I've also altered slightly my .nanorc file so that it includes my preferred "pseudo-bullet"--the equals sign. What that means is that any line that does not begin with the equals sign--regardless of whether it's indented or not--does not get color highlighting applied. Lines that do begin with the equals sign--indented or not--do get color highlighting applied. The relevant section of the updated .nanorc is:

syntax "outl" "\.outl$"
color brightwhite "(^)=.*$"
color brightred "(^[[:blank:]])=.*$"
color brightgreen "(^[[:blank:]]{2})=.*$"
color magenta "(^[[:blank:]]{3})=.*$"
color brightblue "(^[[:blank:]]{4})=.*$"
color brightyellow "(^[[:blank:]]{5})=.*$"
color cyan "(^[[:blank:]]{6})=.*$"
color brightred "(^[[:blank:]]{7})=.*$"
color brightgreen "(^[[:blank:]]{8})=.*$"
color magenta "(^[[:blank:]]{9})=.*$"
color brightblue "(^[[:blank:]]{10})=.*$"

That's pretty much it. The only other modification that might be done involves quotation marks: since TeX/LaTeX expects, not " but `` (double back-ticks) as the opening quotation marks, my files produce the wrong sort of open quotation mark (back-facing instead of front-facing). If one of the above scripts could be modified to detect the opening quotation marks and replace them with the needed double back-ticks, it would make processing of the outline files more complete (ugh, I've just realized I have a similar problem with single quotes or what are sometimes called apostrophes). Otherwise, a search-and-replace will be in order prior to running pdflatex on the converted outlines.

Ya know, come to think of it, working with TeX/LaTeX is a real PITA. The final output is stunning, and no word processor I've ever dealt with comes anywhere close to matching it aesthetically. But it's still a PITA. And that's gonna to have to do it for now.

Addendum to second installment: a TeX/LaTeX template for outlines

As a follow-up to the last installment regarding creating outlines with nano, I've done some further experimentation with LaTeX and wanted to post here a template I created. The template contains the mark-up that, when appropriately applied, can turn a nano outline into one that prints nicely on a page. After running pdflatex on the created file (which should be given a *.tex extension first), a nice pdf can be output for sending to the printer.

Without further ado, the code:

\documentclass[14pt]{extarticle}
\usepackage{cjwoutl}
\usepackage[top=1in,bottom=1in,left=1in,right=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{underlin}
\setlength{\headsep}{12pt}
\pagestyle{myheadings}
\markright{\today {\hfill ***Header*title*here***\hfill}}
\linespread{1.3} % gives 1.5 line spacing
\pagestyle{underline}
\begin{document}
\begin{outline}[new]
%\outl{1}
%       \outl{2}
%               \outl{3}
%                       \outl{4}
%                               \outl{5}
%                                       \outl{6}
%                                               \outl{7}
%                                                       \outl{8}
%                                                               \outl{9}
%                                                                       \outl{10}
\end{outline}
\end{document}

Now, for a bit of an explanation. I've increased the font size (see the \begin \end{Large} stipulations) due to my deteriorating vision: the standard 10 pt. font used for the document class just is not going to work for me. For the same reason, I needed to increase line spacing (the \linespread stipulation).

Of course the \outl{#} comments indicate the levels of the outline and how far from the left margin the text gets spaced. The spaces in the template are not, of course needed, but I find them to be a visual aid when looking at this mark-up, so I left them in the template.

The key package I'm using, as may be evident to those of you who've learned a bit about TeX/LaTeX, and the one that allows more than four outline levels, is the cjwoutl package. I also wanted to fiddle with page margins, since the default article class margins seem terribly wasteful of paper. So I set them to be one inch all around.

The final printed product looks pretty nice. Truth be told, I'd like to see greater indentation increments for the outline levels, but I think that might actually be tweakable. I'm not up for attempting that at the moment though, since this looks like it should suit my needs fine.

So, what remains to be done is to find some way to apply that code to the outlines I create in nano. For the time being, I'm content to just edit the files manually, adding mark-up where needed. But there is surely a way to automate that task--a way, unfortunately, shrouded in mystery for uninitiated plebians like myself.

What would need to be done first of all is probably to add at least some special marking to the outline file itself. For example, if each outline level entry were to begin with a unique character unlikely to appear anywhere else in the document as the first character in a new line--say, an equals sign--processing the file could probably be simplified. A program could then be written to look for every new line that begins, either with the equals sign, or with one or more tab spaces followed by an equals sign. Depending on the presence of the equals sign at the beginning of new lines, or after one or more spaces from the newline, the program could be told to replace the equals sign with the \outl{#} mark-up, appropriately incremented.

Then, of course, the preamble and ending would need to be added to the file. Finally, the file would need to be saved with a new extension, namely the .tex extension, so that pdflatex could process it.

For better reference, here are some screenshots of the stages of creating this sort of outline using nano. First, some dummy text entered into a test.outl file open in nano:

In the next phase, the mark-up is added and the file is saved with a new extension (note how the color highlighting changes when the file's extension is modified)(LATER EDIT; you may also note that the prepended and appended lines do not match exactly the mark-up from my template--that because I edited those parts slightly, having found a better way to increase font size for the document):

Finally, pdflatex is run on the file that had the mark-up added and its extension changed appropriately. The pdf produced looks like this:

To give some concrete examples, using regular expressions as they are understood by nano, of the way the nano outline file would have to be processed, the following. Every instance of ^= (new line followed by equals sign) should be replaced by ^\outl{1} (new line followed by first-outline-level mark-up). Next, every instance of ^[[:blank:]]= (new line followed by tab space, followed by equals sign) should be replaced by ^[[:blank:]]\outl{2}. And so on for the various outline levels.

Then, the mark-up

\documentclass[14pt]{extarticle}
\usepackage{cjwoutl}
\usepackage[top=1in,bottom=1in,left=1in,right=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{underlin}
\setlength{\headsep}{12pt}
\pagestyle{myheadings}
\markright{\today{\hfill ***Header*title*here***\hfill}}
\linespread{1.3} % gives 1.5 line spacing
\pagestyle{underline}
\begin{document}
\begin{outline}[new]

should be prepended to the beginning of the file, and

\end{outline}
\end{document}

should be appended to the file's end. Finally, the extension of the file to which all the mark-up has been added should be changed to .tex. After this, the file is ready for processing by pdflatex.

That's how far I've gotten with it to date. Next, I'll be looking for the aid of someone who might be able to give pointers on how the file could be processed as described. I note that Steve Litt's conversion program for making vimoutliner files into something LyX can handle is done using awk. So, perhaps this could be done in the same way. If I discover a way of doing it, I'll post the results in a further addendum to second installment in this series.

NOTE: I made a later edit to the TeX/LaTeX code so that the date, rather than the author's name, appears at the left margin in the header. I also increased the font size for the header title. So the screenshots no longer correspond precisely with the code.

ANOTHER LATER NOTE: here, by the way, is the modified entry from .nanorc that both makes the color highlighting possible, as well as designates the equals sign as a sort of pseudo-bullet (note that levels that do not start with the equals sign do not get color highlighted on this scheme):

syntax "outl" "\.outl$"
color brightwhite "(^)=.*$"
color brightred "(^[[:blank:]])=.*$"
color brightgreen "(^[[:blank:]]{2})=.*$"
color magenta "(^[[:blank:]]{3})=.*$"
color brightblue "(^[[:blank:]]{4})=.*$"
color brightyellow "(^[[:blank:]]{5})=.*$"
color cyan "(^[[:blank:]]{6})=.*$"
color brightred "(^[[:blank:]]{7})=.*$"
color brightgreen "(^[[:blank:]]{8})=.*$"
color magenta "(^[[:blank:]]{9})=.*$"
color brightblue "(^[[:blank:]]{10})=.*$"
color brightyellow "(^[[:blank:]]{11})=.*$"
color cyan "(^[[:blank:]]{12})=.*$"