- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2013 22:43:40 +0000 (UTC)
- To: David Sheets <kosmo.zb@gmail.com>
- cc: John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>, Marcos Caceres <w3c@marcosc.com>, Matthew Kerwin <matthew@kerwin.net.au>, URI <uri@w3.org>
On Fri, 13 Dec 2013, David Sheets wrote: > On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 9:19 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote: > > On Thu, 12 Dec 2013, John Cowan wrote: > >> > >> WHATWG standards are written in code (it would be perfectly feasible > >> to write a compiler for it) > > > > Man, if that was true that would be awesome on so many levels. > > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jul/1103.html "Some parts of one of the parsers can be mechanically converted to code" is a far from "WHATWG standards are written in code", unfortunately. There are actually much better examples if you want to look for parts of WHATWG specs that are specified in compilable code, e.g. the table sorting model has a parser that is literally written in pseudo-code in the HTML spec source, and the postprocessor turns it into English! Having parts of specs in computer-readable form isn't unusual; many IETF specs use BNF, for example, from which it is somewhat easy to generate syntax validators. However, this is a long way from what John said. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Friday, 13 December 2013 22:44:04 UTC