solidified the term @dictionary and @definition across the classes (but not in ruby-bbcode.rb, i'll do that at the very end)
moved to_sentence_bbcode_tags into TagCollection which is the only place it was being used.  Simplified it to a function returning a hash.
substituted .nil? for .blank? and all tests pass, now there's no dependency on rails.
tidy'd comments
tidy'd up tag_info.rb
renamed tag_collection to tag_sifter
commented TagSifter
working on code to help me visualize what's going on with the @bbtree.
fixed up the cycle_through_nodes method so it makes sense.
dryed visualization method
Moved some dependendcies from the Gemfile to the gemspec file.
added require 'test/unit' to test_helper as we'll need that if we remove the rails dependency in the gemspec for testing purposes.
completely removed dependence on rails... but hijacked their 'to_sentence' method... there's a lot of dead code in the test folder now...  also hijacking the source code of an active_support method might not be the best way to do things... maybe we should require 'active_support' instead and depend on that gem.
comment
removed in-house implementation of .to_sentence and added dependency for activesupport because this way is much, much safer I think.
removed .project from repo
removed .project from repo
working on debugging code to visualize the @bbtree being built up... stumbled upon a confusing puzzle...
getting much closer to solving the problem.  I'm beginning to see that I need to walk the tree for each of @bbtree's nodes... maybe
I solved the to_v puzzle.  I was having a hard time because the tree is built a little funny when you nest things within [li] nodes...  So many hours wasted on that...