Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

A major problem in accelerator physics has been the sharing of lattice description files between programs. At present, there is no generally accepted lattice format that is comprehensive enough to meet current needs. To alleviate this problem, a lattice description format called Accelerator Markup Language (AML) has been created. AML is based upon the standard Extensible Markup Language (XML) format which gives AML the needed flexibility to be easily extended to changing requirements. In conjunction with AML, A set of parsing routines is being developed to speed the integration of AML into any program. These routines, collectively known as the Universal Accelerator Parser (UAP), will have the added feature of being able to translate MAD compatible lattice files and will also contain the needed hooks so that it will be a relatively simple matter to extend UAP to accommodate other lattice formats. Back parser routines to create AML and MAD lattice files will also be part of the UAP package.