[REBOL] Re: designing dialects - was OWL
From: chalz:earthlink at: 21-Mar-2002 22:46
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It IS however a natural for a DIALECTING and ONTOLOGY
language. I've been thinking a bit about this recently
and especially as I consider XML / HTML to be verbose,
not human centric in design, wasteful! why have closing
tags for every value.
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After looking at XML a little, I have to agree with you there, Robbo. Even
further, have you looked at MathML? Yikes! The samples I saw showed tags
around every single character of the sample mathematical formulae. And even
then, it didn't come out right (IE5.5 can't view MathML, and W3C's own browser,
Amaya, showed them all twisted and messed up). I think we still have a ways to
go here.
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An Extensible Dialecting and Ontology Language should not
be REBOL. REBOL is a vendor specific programming or messaging
language and it is proprietary.
A web dialect and ontology language should be programming
language neutral. It is my contention that
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Agreement there, too. However, I'm wondering if Sunanda's initial remark
was with regards to implementing it within REBOL, so you can load OWL material
with REBOL instead of an intermediary. Am I wrong?
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Instead of text macros like
*this text will appear as bold* ; etext example
in Pliant's .PAGE this would be
BOLD TEXT "this text will apear as bold" ; .page example
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I'm rather interested in this. It sounds rather bold, pardon the pun.
Though in reading the link you've provided, I see room for ideas and
improvements etc, but unless I'm going to get serious about it, I'll more or
less leave them alone.
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A well designed DIALECTing language is human friendly to understand
and maintain.
XML / HTML are TOO verbose.
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Captain Obvious, at our services ;)
Unfortunately, what's generally obvious is rarely what's done. In an effort
to make sure that things are done right and error-free (pshaw), designers tend
to over-complicate.
