The semantic bovinator's goal is to provide an intermediate api for authors of language agnostic tools who want to deal with languages in a generic way. it also provides a simple way for mode authors, who are experts in their language, to provide a parser for those tool authors, without knowing anything about those tools.

the semantic bovinator is made up of these important pieces:
- lexer: converts a language into a token stream
- parser: converts a token stream into a stream of nonterminals
defined by the language.
- parser-generator: converts a language definition into a table
usable by the parser. (written using the semantic bovinator)
- language definitions: parsers already existing for the parser
generator language (bovine normal form), emacs lisp, and c.
- speedbar browser: code for browsing a generated nonterminal list
with speedbar.
- documentation generator: identifies inline documentation in source
code, and can convert it to texinfo. it can also create inline
documentation.
semantic is now a part of cedet (collection of emacs development environment tools).