- From: James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 21:53:02 +0100
Ryan Johnson wrote: > Anyway, I think that it might be quite a jump for manufacturers. I also > see that a standard language would need to be decided upon just to > describe the structure of the programming languages. Is it worth the > time to come up with suggestions and examples of a programming language > definition markup, or is my head in the clouds? I think that what I'm proposing is a lot simpler than what you have in mind. My proposal relies on built-in knowledge of the format. As far as I know, that's pretty much how all programs handle syntax highlighting today. Of course, it would be good if the language identifier was a real resource that pointed to a document that could be used to dynamically add language-specific features but, like you say, that's hard. Even without that, syntax highlighting can be provided for many types, error checking may be avaliable for some and even if the UA doesn't provide any functionality of it's own, type-specific helper apps could be used to edit the input. (question - would a MIME type be more appropriate than a URI as an identfier? It's simpler and I guess is specific enough to cover all required formats) -- "If anybody ever tells you that you?re using the language incorrectly, just yell 'prescriptive grammarian!' at the top of your voice and all the linguists in the building will run over and surround the guy... and then they?ll rough him up"
Received on Thursday, 1 July 2004 13:53:02 UTC