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?

And syntax does not need to be defined properly?

> 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.

Did you say that there will be only one wrapper? If more, that would have
to be defined in the syntax. It is bloat, as we discussed.

> 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).

FLD does define dialect interoperability at the language level.
It does not say what to do if an engine gets a document that it does not
understand, but I was talking about a **completely different issue**.

> > 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.

But a directly related one.


	--michael  


> Christian
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 29 April 2008 14:22:35 UTC