would it make sense to collect a new kind of ixml sample?

Ixml example fans,

Our current samples/ directory is intended to hold "a collection of ixml
grammars for various languages or notations for which some more or less
authoritative grammar or syntax description is available."  So we have
grammars for things like URIs, BCP47 language tags, ISO 8601 dates, and
so on.  (And soon, I hope, more.)

When I think about using ixml in practice, however, quite often the
input I have in mind does not have a published grammar, and the data
requires some further processing to get it into the desired XML format.

For example, in many collections of text-only material (e.g. the
collection of IETF RFCs) there may be lists of bibliographic references;
it might be useful to write an ixml grammar to describe these and
recognize at least the simplest and most regular (and possibly most
common) forms of citation in such material -- useful coverage of all
inputs is unlikely given that bibliographic citation practice varies so
much, but for some purposes something is better than nothing.

For another example: in some long-term (and current back-burner)
projects I am involved in, it's helpful to define a simple data-capture
syntax for some data which can then be converted by an ixml processor to
XML, and then by XSLT to the specific target form).  In one project,
it's formulae in first-order predicate calculus, which are highly
regular and can be parsed, and which are faster to type in a
keyboard-only notation than to create in XML even with a good editor.
In another project, it's diagrams using a particular graphical notation
with potentially complex structure but very few distinct operators.  In

Grammars for RFC-style bibliographic citations or for in-house notations
for logical formulae or diagrams are not suitable for the samples/
directory, since they don't describe publicly documented notations.  But
they might be of interest to some potential users of ixml as showing
some workflows that could use ixml.

Do other people think it might be useful to make a collection of such
examples?  And if so, what should it be called?  'Toys' will sound
pejorative to some, and doesn't really cover all cases.  'Demos'?
'Sample-workflows'?  'ixml-in-use'?


Michael

-- 
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Black Mesa Technologies LLC
http://blackmesatech.com

Received on Friday, 24 June 2022 14:59:33 UTC