[REBOL] Re: Is Rebol OO?
From: gerardcote:sympatico:ca at: 12-Jan-2004 16:02
Hi Jason,
After your Jabber ref. I went to their main site and will probably try it soon just to
see how it works for real exchanging.
I also got another ref. that could be of some interest to you about extensible scripting
languages (ESL)
http://www.vydra.net/esl/paper/ . Found this one from the Trevor link about the REBOL-UNIT.R
script which is broken.
After investigating a bit around the broken link I found this paper that describes some
dialect examples and I think it would be
interesting for some of us as a starting point to experiment and document parse.
What do you think about ?
Additionally I could not resist to buy the book David referred to in his paper which
was written in 2001 by Steven John Metsker,
Building Parsers With Java. I got it used for 15 $ USD.
As Volker and Gregg said I don't think too that it is trivial to design domain specific
languages and grammars that accompany them
(I never learned formally in school to do so and this is one of the most complex concepts
I read about until now) even if we have
some tools like parse to help cope with. I don't think either that it is what you said
but nevertheless I can't say I already tamed
these animals even with a lot of books to refer to. I am not much mathematically inclined
either and that can explain a bit the many
difficulties I got in the past with many of the books I have read until now.
May be someone has yet to write the ultimate book that will permit every programmer that
wants to do some steps in this way to be
able to do so ... by itself - as easily as it can be done !
I think that as REBOL learners we could begin some common experiment around parse and
the design of some small specific dialects for
illustrative purpose and may be for some common useful use too - one for automatically
completing file names (like some well known
tools under DOS did it some time ago...) for use under Windows would be of some help
to me.
This could be done with the help of some advanced level REBOLer(s) that could interact
(or even drive the group in some way by
suggesting some plan, giving hints or even explaining some obscure or difficult concepts
that must be learned to really understand
the whole) with the learning members exchanging on IOS or AltMe or even on a Forum. The
important think to remember is that what
will be done should be kept for archiving and later retrieval.
And later (or sooner) this could be done about any concept suggested by someone on the
ML (or by the REBOL learning classes - if
some entity existed).
It might be done this way : Someone decides to start with any idea submitted to the cookbook
or the ML and starts some exchange and
experiment about this theme - starting with some DESIGN PHASE (Generally just questions
to guide about where to start with and why
to do it - traditionnaly called a DATA analysis followed by some ALGORITHM design) what
could be.
The ML actually plays much of this role but this not really the place to do so for everything
that is submitted in - even if it is a
lot useful to everybody and it must continue in some way. The problem is that after some
thread is completed, the results are
generally lost since they are not of general interest and not much useful in a planned
learning. This is what is missing. The Zine
was the part that permitted every newcomer to study some material of this kind - planned
for more or less advanced stuff.
Why is it no more in use then ? I think I can answer to this by myself since I know the
sum of voluntary this represents for each
submitter - and it must be a talented one since it must be understandable by the readers
- and the reviewer work is not to be
underestimated too. In fact it is an enourmous task that must be shared between many
volunteers and done on a pleasure basis. I
think it is time to raise it again in some form or in another.
As a starting point - since we were talking about dialects and parsing - read the following
:
============================================================
For example I find it so annoying to me to completely rewrite my complete paths (switching
the / for the \ plus adding the " at both
ends and stripping the : after the Drive name) each time I have to type some copied file
name and path from my Windows Explorer to
the console prompt - I mnow ther must exist some script to help somewhere but this could
be useful to have defined a dialect for
managing files any time it would be needed to
express for example the listing of the files contained in "E:/DOCUMENTS/Gerard/credit
card Orders/Alibris/"
and limiting those to only the ones created during the month of february of the current
year (or before or after some date or
between 2 dates) with a command such : "my-list-dir named-dir yyyy-mm 2004-02" . For
sure I implicitly sent the named path-file
into a named-dir word.
We could elaborate more and add many facets as to how to specify the order of the listing
and the nature of the displayed info à la
DOS (dir cmd) or some variant of it. At least this task is easy to understand even if
the details can be cumbersome to mix together
on the same command line - à la Unix - may be with pipes for connecting them.
In another context some time ago I thought of some "calendar" query language to help
display the many reservations recorded in a
collaborative agenda for example (or a skating reservation registry for an arena). I
am not sure this kind of tool would never
replace the old and proven pen and paper registry but I would liek to experiment with
these concepts.
Just to give you an idea of the involved difficulties, imagine a customer that phones
at the arena and want to know if he can take a
reservation one time each week for the next 12 weeks preferably during the wednesday
evenings.
This should not be of a real problem if the 12 wednesdays are free. The problem begins
when some of the weeks are not free and the
clerk must go back and forth interrogating the system to see where it will fit another
evening to accomodate the client for all of
his needs - IN REAL TIME PLEASE - the client is waiting at the other end of the phone.
I know how real and good is the efficiency of the paper method in such a case but I always
dreamed of some tool to explore with a
computer. I think REBOL could be this tool - if we could get some way to connect it to
some external way to enter data like a touch
screen can do instead of a mouse and a keyboard. In fact the three should intermixed
in this app.
Regards,
Gerard
