[e-cvs] cvs commit: e/doc/download/0-8-10delta index.html
markm@eros.cs.jhu.edu
markm@eros.cs.jhu.edu
Fri, 14 Dec 2001 15:14:10 -0500
markm 01/12/14 15:14:10
Modified: doc/download/0-8-10delta index.html
Log:
XML political correctness. Thanks Dean (I think?)
Revision Changes Path
1.8 +14 -9 e/doc/download/0-8-10delta/index.html
Index: index.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/e/doc/download/0-8-10delta/index.html,v
retrieving revision 1.7
retrieving revision 1.8
diff -u -r1.7 -r1.8
--- index.html 2001/12/14 19:15:37 1.7
+++ index.html 2001/12/14 20:14:10 1.8
@@ -168,18 +168,25 @@
<h3>Term Trees, for real this time</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>John McCarthy has said: "<i>XML is just S-Expressions, only ten
- times as verbose.</i>" This comparison is too kind to XML. What
+ times as verbose.</i>" This comparison, while critical of XML,
+ helps explain the source of its appeal -- for most of the computing
+ world, XML is the first S-Expression-like system they've seen. What
XML, S-Expressions, Antlr ASTs (abstract syntax trees), and Prolog Term
- trees have in common is that they are simple(*) notations (or surface
- syntaxes) for simple(*) "practically universal" trees of symbols.
- These trees are "practically universal" in that many other
- forms of symbolic data can be mapped into any of these trees.</p>
+ trees have in common is that they are notations (or surface syntaxes)
+ for "practically universal" trees of symbols. These trees
+ are "practically universal" in that many other forms of symbolic
+ data can be mapped into any of these trees. </p>
<p>The clearest and most compelling case is the Antlr AST -- these are
used to represent the result of parsing anything that can be parsed
according to a BNF grammar. This demonstrates that one such universal
data structures may have a great multitude of surface syntaxes.</p>
- <p>Although the Antlr documentation also calls these S-Expressions, and
- although the Antlr notation for writing them looks like S-Expressions,
+ <p>Each of these S-Expression-like systems provide somewhat different
+ levels of syntactic overhead, provision for type specification, and
+ semantic clarity. For the purposes of E, a simple, clear semantics (to
+ enable quasi-literals and for security reasons) is required, and compatibility
+ with Antlr is highly desired.</p>
+ <p>Although the Antlr documentation also calls its ASTs S-Expressions,
+ and although the Antlr notation for writing them looks like S-Expressions,
semantically they are actually most similar to Prolog Term trees. Since
Antlr is the system we most desire to interoperate with, as of this
release we introduce E's Prolog-like Term trees, with conversions back
@@ -209,8 +216,6 @@
Terms with no arguments, the "<code>()</code>" is optional.</p>
<p>We are working towards a quasi-parser for <a href="../../elang/grammar/quasi-terms.html">quasi-literal
Term</a> expressions and patterns.</p>
- <hr>
- <p>(*) For XML, let's say instead "perceived as simple".</p>
</blockquote>
<h3>Taming the Java API with *.safej Files</h3>
<blockquote>