Re: I have tried, really

David,

your question is very valid and your candour much appreciated, don't  
feel you have to apologise!

Primarily o:XML is a practical language for solving practical  
problems. It scratches an itch that neither Java/c# style languages  
nor XML-based technologies like XSLT and XQuery can reach. Try  
writing a simple XML/XSLT web application or straight XML web service  
in o:XML and you'll hopefully see what I'm talking about: integrated  
XPath with OO extensions coupled with first-class XML objects makes  
XML processing extremely straightforward.
Check out the vendue project [1] for a simple example.

Secondarily o:XML is a means for exploring a number of theory areas  
including abstract syntaxes, language transformations, meta- 
programming and AOSD, code generation and what I've termed layered  
programming - the inclusion of several layers of information with the  
source code.
An example of theory in practice is hatatap [2], where a descriptive  
XML format is used to generate o:XML code.

I'm glad that o:XML piqued your interest, hope you'll be staying on!

/m

[1] http://www.o-xml.org/projects/vendue.html
[2] http://www.o-xml.org/projects/hatatap.html


On 22 Nov 2005, at 17:43, David Teller wrote:

>    Hi everyone.
>
>  This is my first post to the list, so I guess I should present  
> myself.
> My name is David, my real job is research on programming languages, my
> night/week-end job is open-source developer.
>
>  For about one year, I have been looking at o-xml with curiosity. I've
> browsed through the website & documentation, I've tried very hard and
> still I don't understand: What is the point ? Is this a student
> project ? Is there someone actually interested in coding directly with
> an abstract syntax instead of a concrete one -- and who doesn't do  
> Lisp
> already ?
>
> Cheers,
>  David
>
> P.S.:
>  Sorry, if this sounds trollish. I guess it is a half-troll, but I  
> would
> really like to know the answer to that question.
>