Re: AW: [PRD] Implemented Harold's comments, completing ACTION-809 (Was: Re: [RIF][PRD] ACTION-767: Review PRD)

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Adrian,

"Adrian Paschke" <adrian.paschke@gmx.de> wrote on 15/05/2009 13:50:41:
> Re: [RIF][PRD] ACTION-767: Review PRD)
> 
> To understand the syntactical expressiveness of PRD and the examples
> the presentation syntax, in particular the compact EBNF, is quite 
> important for the reader. Hence it should be presented earlier in 
> the document. I think it is not helpful if the readers needs to 
> scroll or search for the appendix in order to understand what it 
> written in the main text.

The EBNF is a helpful device to get a one page overview of PRD syntactical 
expressiveness (at least for those used to EBNF's; personally, I find that 
an UML diagram is way more informative for this purpose), but it is not 
really part of the specification.

I do not believe that it is useful to understand the abstract syntax nor 
the semantics, while reading. The (concrete) PS is not used very heavily, 
and never in a way that would require referring to the complete grammar, 
in the body of the document. And the specification of the XML syntax, 
while it refers to the definitions of the abstract syntax, never refer to 
the concrete PS, nor the EBNF.

I would even go as far and say that giving the EBNF a too prominent place 
in the document might be confusing to the outsider: today, I spent half an 
hour explaining somebody what the EBNF in Core said, and why it was not a 
problem if many entities in the EBNF where mentioned nowhere else, and 
esp. not in the abstract (presentation) syntax, the XML syntax nor the 
mapping between abstract (presentation) syntax and XML...

So, no, I do really think that, in PRD at least, the EBNF should not come 
before the abstract syntax, the semantics or the XML syntax, and that it 
would, therefore, be better in an appendix, because the last section is 
what you read last, whereas an appendix is something you look at whenever 
you need to.

Cheers,

Christian

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