Re: [ISSUE-51] Formulae wrappers (1/2: abstract and concrete)

Michael Kifer wrote:

> This does not work for several reasons.
> [...]

I am not convinced, at least not by the 3 reasonns that you mention (see 
below). But I may have missed the point. And that was just one proposal 
to get us off the hook: if it does not work, let us find something else...

> First, the Rule people want a syntactic restriction that allows just one
> rule inside. So, it is not just a replacement of a wrapper name but also
> syntactic tweaks in BLD and the formal syntax.

Isn't that purely syntactic? In BLD, a Rule would be defined as a 
WRAPPER with one single RULE inside, and a Group as a WRAPPER that is 
not a Rule. It would have no impact on the semantics. What is the problem?

> Second, even though FLD will not not have a tag for that wrapper in your
> proposal, it is unclear how this will work with multiple dialects.  [...]
> How will the compatibility at the XML level work?

This is a question of dialect inter-operability. Something that neither 
FLD nor BLD deal with, anyway. But I would expect that falling back on 
the right tag in the right dialect would be an easy case for XTAN 
(whenever we will have XTAN).

> Third, what about the possibility of attaching meta to sets of rules in BLD?

You would use the "Group" WRAPPER (and use it to wrap Rules or RULEs, 
depending whether you want to attach separate meta to individual RULEs 
or not).

 > For instance, yesterday we discovered a MAJOR bug in
> BLD. The syntax in the direct specification is completely off (it does not
> define rules!) -- that despite the fact that several very thorough
> reviewers made several passes over it!

This is, indeed worrying, but a different subject.

Christian

Received on Tuesday, 29 April 2008 14:04:49 UTC