RE: [WebIDL] grammar in ABNF

Hi Cameron,

>>If you can suggest some
>>specific points that need clarification, I will add some more prefatory
>>text.
I had the following problem:

[45]    ScopedName      -> "::" ScopedNameAfterColon
 | identifier ScopedNameParts
Where I assumed that each ScopedName has to start with "::", because according to ABNF this production has to be written as
[45ABNF]        ScopedName      = ("::" ScopedNameAfterColon) | (identifier ScopedNameParts)

It was there with release 1.189 of the spec:
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2006/webapi/WebIDL/Overview.html?rev=1.189


The current version 1.191 clarifies the above, i.e. the grammar is corrected as:
[52]    ScopedName      ->      AbsoluteScopedName
 | RelativeScopedName
as in
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2006/webapi/WebIDL/Overview.html?rev=1.191


So it seems the problem that I had was corrected implicitly in version 1.190.
I am ok with the grammar now.

Anyway, I would put some reference to the syntax of the LL(1). Maybe Aho+Sethi+Ullman's book could be listed there?

Thanks.

Kind regards,
Marcin

Marcin Hanclik
ACCESS Systems Germany GmbH
Tel: +49-208-8290-6452  |  Fax: +49-208-8290-6465
Mobile: +49-163-8290-646
E-Mail: marcin.hanclik@access-company.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Cameron McCormack [mailto:cam@mcc.id.au]
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 4:18 AM
To: Marcin Hanclik
Cc: public-webapps
Subject: Re: [WebIDL] grammar in ABNF

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/


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Received on Wednesday, 1 July 2009 05:26:50 UTC