GPO locator code data standard

Locator (bell) code data

Locator code data is used by GPO for typesetting government documents, notably the US Code. The system was created in the early 1980's and is still in use today. It is basically a highly modal system that uses escape sequences to encode typesetting commands, similar to procedural markup coding used in older word-processing software. The documentation here is somewhat aged material obtained from the House LRC by the LII in 2000 or so.

• The full documentation directory is here, and is a mixed bag of pdf files and documentation in html, Word, and plain text.
• The HTML version of the Quick Guide is here.
• Some clues for processing locator codes into XHTML are here

Cornell's LII has created an XML version of the full US Code from locator code data. We also have a tool called "geezer" that translates locator-code data into a more human-readable form, more-or-less useful for probing locator-code data when writing translation applications. It is one of a number of analysis applications that may be more or less useful for other purposes.