- From: Chris Moschini <cmoschini@myrealbox.com>
- Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 18:10:19 -0500
- To: www-html@w3.org
David Woolley [david@djwhome.demon.co.uk] wrote: > Meta syntaxes for programming languages are almost as old as programming > languages, e.g. Backus Naur Form. This isn't quite what Aaron is describing though; Backus Naur Form will not result in a document which, upon a machine's reading it, means the machine can now parse and execute code written in the language described. This *is* true of XML DTDs - if I provide a machine capable of understanding XML a DTD and XML, it immediately knows what to do with that XML. I think this is what Aaron is asking for - metadata with constructs like if_begin ::= if if_test ::= ( condition ) etc. If this language were "PDTD," then a program written in Python and a PDTD for Python are all that would be needed for a PDTD-capable machine. This could have very beneficial results; if .Net supported "PDTD," then all I would need to do is write a PDTD for SmallTalk and I can suddenly write SmallTalk programs for my .Net applications. The question is worthwhile. But as I said earlier, this is not the mailing list for the question. -Chris "SoopahMan" Moschini http://hiveminds.info/ http://soopahman.com/
Received on Friday, 14 November 2003 18:15:57 UTC