Parsability (re: Thinking about style sheets)

>        Hakon's format is broken into manageable, logical chunks
>        that allow for extensibility and ease of parsing.

Although these examples look more human-readable than the lisp-like syntax
of a previous dssl-lite proposal, it seems to be a step backward in
extensibility and ease of parsing.  Is there some core grammar of which all
these examples are just variations?  If not, there should be, and there
should be a very clear demarcation of a kernel long-lived style sheet
language from a set of particular facilities that match contemporary DTP.
For example, attributes of the form foo.bar.whatever are part of the core
language, the specific drop-cap attribute is not.  In other words, design
for change (and not just for additions).

>We should be seeing a full description of the experimental notation,
>with proposals, etc. and a full listing of properties, values,
>meta-variables, etc. on the Web pretty soon.

With a simple  (LL(1) or LR(0)) grammar for the kernel, I hope, and a clear
division between kernel and a set of facilities that can be described by
phrases in the kernel language.

-Michal

----------------------
Michal Young
Purdue University
Software Engineering Research Center
Department of Computer Sciences
1398 Computer Science Building
West Lafayette, IN  47907-1398
voice: 317-494-6023
fax:   317-494-0739
URL:   http://www.cs.purdue.edu/people/young
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Received on Tuesday, 2 May 1995 10:24:30 UTC