Draft Spec mark 2
Jim Croft
jrc at ANBG.GOV.AU
Mon Sep 4 08:38:17 CEST 2000
Una wrote:
>But the discussion here keeps slipping into implementation issues
>and forgetting about the underlying abstractions.
This is so true and has dogged this list ever since it started - at this
stage we need to be constantly on guard against dropping to quickly into
building something before we have properly defined the scope of the project.
>We could conduct this discussion in PERL code too. (Hey, why not?)
Because PERL is yucky, that's why... :)
>Why not forget the codes
>(or pseudo codes) and use ordinary words that we all understand? *Then*
>decide which language (if any) to implement it in, *after* we all agree
>what "it" is.
That is what I am waiting for... XML seems to be a fairly intuitive
contemporary way of describing things and it seems to be a reasonable thing
to use for the time being... Remember our very first attempts to do it in
EBNF? Same idea, different language, but at the time, I do not think many
of us were aware of what we were trying to achieve... This was a graphic
example of an idea probably being right, but if people can not understand
and embrace it, it will not get anywhere...
Still not 100% sure what 'it' is, but I think with the most recent
discussions we are getting closer...
jim
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