Re: Alternative syntaxes for the prolog

On Thu, 2024-03-07 at 17:49 -0700, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen wrote:
> 
> "Liam R. E. Quin" <liam@fromoldbooks.org> writes:
> 
> 
> > ... iXML already uses punctuation differently to other syntaxes i
> > know
> > of, so i’m not sure i accept that argument. If semicolon can be
> > "or"
> > then % can introduce metadata.
> 
> Let the record show that at this point I nudged Liam with my elbow
> and
> whispered perhaps a bit too loudly "Prolog, and van Wijngaarden
> grammars".  (Meaning, they both use ';' to separate disjuncts.)

Ah, i’d forgotten prolog, it’s true. I don’t think van Wijngaarden
grammars fall into languages i knew of, preposition-ending sentence
notwithstanding.

Still, we are for sure into non-mainstream territory.

It would be nice for the "file" command (Macos/Linux/Unix) to be able
to identify ixml, as well as Web servers (is there a recommended
filename suffix and an IETF media type registration? having an
identifying string near the start of a file helps there too).

It’s also useful to be able to include a pointer to licence, and a
source URL for people to learn more / contact the author.

Of course, one can always use not-reached grammar productions to embed
such things, and there can be a convention for it. But it would be
better to acknowledge that it's useful and support it.

liam


-- 
Liam Quin, https://www.delightfulcomputing.com/
Available for XML/Document/Information Architecture/XSLT/
XSL/XQuery/Web/Text Processing/A11Y training, work & consulting.
Barefoot Web-slave, antique illustrations:  http://www.fromoldbooks.org

Received on Friday, 8 March 2024 04:24:20 UTC