sorts needed for extensibility? (Re: Action 299 - removing sorts)

[I think this is really about extensibility, not BLD, but I'm not sure.]

Much trimmed from
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2007Jul/0088.html

kifer@cs.sunysb.edu (Michael Kifer) writes;
> You need to show that your design is extensible. This implies the above
> property. Basically, if you have a ruleset in a lower dialect, its XML
> should be valid in higher dialect. Its logic (= syntax and semantics)
> should also be valid in a higher dialect "as is" without any transformations.

When you say "extensibility", are you thinking of some kind of
modularity to the semantics or the specification of the language?  While
that would be elegant, I don't think that's necessary.

For example, I think one could define a dialect which builds on BLD by
adding something with purely operational semantics.  Or one could define
a dialect introducing syntactic sugar, defined just by specifying a
syntactic transformation to BLD.  These could be specified with no
connection to how the BLD semantics are specified -- to whether there
are sorts or not, etc.  Right?

The important thing is that wherever dialects overlap, they have the
same semantics.  Beyond that -- like, how the semantics are specified --
isn't a core issue.

        -- Sandro

Received on Tuesday, 24 July 2007 00:11:38 UTC