Re: Re: Use of whitespace

On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 03:39:56PM -0000, Eric Merritt wrote:

> > *Maybe* it is really time to leave the ASCII domain and start using 
> > a real wordprocessor for the IDE. There are many WYSIWYG text components 
> > out there and imagine to have formatted comments in your code! 
>  
> I just see these as two different problem spaces. I am afraid that even the thought 
> of this makes me cringe. 
>   
> > Or the file format for the source files could be XML (which means they 
> > can be (pre-)processed by a lot of tools and the syntax will be easily 
> > extensible when we don't use a DTD ;-). Then, the IDE could display 
> > that in a lot of ways. 
>  
>  When I first read this I almost blew chunks all over my screen, but it does make a 
> wierd cond of sense.  
>  Once I got over my gut reaction to actually writing code in xml I realized that we 
> still have a few problems. 
>  
>   XML is way to verbose. 
>   XML is not very readable when most of the code is in tags. 
>    
> Can you imagine writting code in xml? I cant. I do understand your point about 
> parasiblity. However, our language syntax must be pretty simple and regular to 
> make the macro system work. With this in mind a parser will probably be simple to 
> write. Also a parser will be included in the platform so tools could make use of 
> that. 

Well, if I remember correctly, then there are already plans to make the syntax of
Pragmatic extensible.

If we do, then people could extend the standard syntax with an XML parser!

That would in the end mean that mathematicians can express their
problems in MathML and Pragmatic will be able to turn that directly
into machine code.

The most obvious example for the advantages of this approach is the
"sqrt(2)-problem":

Three people, a game designer, a software developer for a CGI company
and a mathematician use "sqrt(2)".

The game designer needs a fast version with little accuracy.

The CGI guy needs a version which accurate enough to render details
in a 4000x4000 image but not better than that.

The mathematician needs the exact value (ie. for him,
sqrt(2)*sqrt(2) must yield exactly 2).

With the extensible approach, all of them could use "sqrt(2)" in their
code (or <sqrt>2</sqrt> or whatever) and then "inherit" from the
code which translates that and overide it with something which matches
their specific needs.

> btw, the call of volunteers for an additional langauge designer is coming up. If you 
> have the time you may want to consider volunteering. 

:-/ I would prefer to just give input. I'm currently writing a 500page novel,
a Website Editor and then, there is my day-to-day job :-)

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