8. The process of claim 7 , wherein the process action of identifying formatting instructions which are capable of formatting an output item so as to match the formatting of the desired output item of the input-output example, comprises an action of associating formatting instructions from a library of formatting instructions, for each semantic entity field identified in the parse descriptor of the parse descriptor tuple associated with the output item of the input-output example, which produces the corresponding field of the semantic entity of that descriptor tuple in the format exhibited by the portion of the output item associated with the semantic entity field.
8. The process of claim 7 , wherein the process action of identifying formatting instructions which are capable of formatting an output item so as to match the formatting of the desired output item of the input-output example, comprises an action of associating formatting instructions from a library of formatting instructions, for each semantic entity field identified in the parse descriptor of the parse descriptor tuple associated with the output item of the input-output example, which produces the corresponding field of the semantic entity of that descriptor tuple in the format exhibited by the portion of the output item associated with the semantic entity field. 10. The process of claim 8 , wherein the entity class of each semantic entity identifies a prescribed canonical form of the semantic entity, said process further comprising a process actions of, for each weighted semantic entity and parse descriptor tuple, converting the semantic entity to the prescribed canonical form of the semantic entity, and wherein the process action of applying the transform to the semantic entities of the identified parse descriptor tuples associated with the input items to produce the entity of the identified parse descriptor tuple associated with the output item, comprises an action of producing the entity of the identified parse descriptor tuple associated with the output item in the prescribed canonical form, and wherein the process action of identifying formatting instructions which are capable of formatting an output item so as to match the formatting of the desired output item of the input-output example, further comprises an action of converting the output item from the prescribed canonical form to a form consistent with the desired output item of the input-output example.