Re: Syntactic variability

Agreed. I instinctively prefer “:” for no good reason that I can identify, but will happily retrain my brain to use “=“ for simplicity and (what I suspect will be) greater readability.

“|” is very naturally “or” for me - more so than “;”, which I also find clutters up the syntax and makes it harder to read. I imagine most people who program will find “|” more intuitive. 

BTW

> On 20 Apr 2022, at 13:23, Dorothy Hoskins <dorothy.hoskins@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> My vote is for = and | for the aforementioned difficulties reading the smaller characters distinctly , and ; and :
> 
> As long as the characters make sense syntactically to the majority of the group, I also prefer not having alternative characters for the ones we select. We will avoid some future confusion if we follow KISS principle here, I think.
> 
>> On Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:07 AM Tom Hillman <tom@expertml.com> wrote:
>> I'm OK with the syntactic variability, although I will note having the same issues, particularly with `;`.  
>> 
>> I would be happy with standardising our own usage on '=' and '|'.
>> 
>> I think the issues with ambiguity with colons in nonterminal names is resolved well enough with mandatory whitespace after the rule separator.
>> 
>> I don't think removing these alternatives is a necessary change, then.  But I could live with it.
>> 
>> _________________
>> Tomos Hillman
>> eXpertML Ltd
>> +44 7793 242058
>>> On 18 Apr 2022, 10:27 +0100, Norm Tovey-Walsh <norm@saxonica.com>, wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> I’ve been toying with creating an issue for these ideas, but we need to
>>> be reducing the number of issues at this point, not increasing them, so
>>> I keep talking myself out of it.
>>> 
>>> There is unnecessary syntactic variability in ixml that I don’t really
>>> understand. We allow either “:” or “=” as a rule separator and we allow
>>> either “;” or “|” as a alternative separator.
>>> 
>>> I don’t think we’re doing our users a service this way. I’m prepared to
>>> believe that there are users who favor “:” and “;” over “=” and “|” (and
>>> perhaps even other pairings) but I have a hard time believing that it
>>> would be make-or-break deal for anyone: “I love the idea of ixml, but I
>>> refuse to use “=” and “|” so I’m not going to use it.”
>>> 
>>> I tend to use, and perhaps even prefer “:” and “;”, but I propose that
>>> we adopt “=” and “|” exclusively.
>>> 
>>> Using “=” would eliminate the ambiguity caused by colons in nonterminal
>>> names, whether we adopt a proposal to allow that for version 1.0 or
>>> v.Next.
>>> 
>>> Using “|” would reduce the syntactic similarity of “sequence” from
>>> “alternate”. On several occasions, I have used “,” where I meant “;” and
>>> it’s hard to see. I don’t think I would be as likely to use “,” where I
>>> meant “|” and if I did, it would be easier to see the difference. This
>>> is especially the case in character classes, where I’m drawn to
>>> [',', '.'] instead of [','; '.']. I’d be better off with [',' | '.']
>>> 
>>> Be seeing you,
>>> norm
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Norm Tovey-Walsh
>>> Saxonica