- From: Cameron McCormack <cam@mcc.id.au>
- Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 12:18:10 +1000
- To: Marcin Hanclik <Marcin.Hanclik@access-company.com>
- Cc: public-webapps <public-webapps@w3.org>
Hi Marcin. Marcin Hanclik: > Could we have the Web IDL grammar in ABNF? > I think ABNF is quite well adopted on the market. I think using ABNF would make the grammar harder to read, since ABNF quoted terminals are case insensitive, and must be written out as %xHH characters to get case insensitive treatment. My hope is that writing the grammar out as a simple LL(1) grammar with no special syntax for repetition or optional symbols will make it easier for people to write an IDL parser. > Otherwise, I think we could have more formal description of the > grammar used in the current Web IDL spec, since it is easy now to > misunderstand it having the ABNF syntax used in other specs. Is it really easy to misunderstand? ABNF syntax is quite complex compared to the grammar syntax I am using. The only perhaps non-obvious parts are that quoted string terminal symbols are case sensitive and that whitespace is allowed implicitly between every terminal symbol, but this is explained in the text in #idl-grammar. If you can suggest some specific points that need clarification, I will add some more prefatory text. Thanks, Cameron -- Cameron McCormack ≝ http://mcc.id.au/
Received on Wednesday, 1 July 2009 02:18:48 UTC