[ANSI-Smalltalk] RE: ANSI-Smalltalk Digest, Vol 2, Issue 31 - Downloads of ANSI framework

[Richard Sargent]

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Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:47:45 -0600
From: "Ralph Johnson" <johnson at cs.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: [ANSI-Smalltalk] Downloads of ANSI framework

it is a lot easier for me to tell whether I want to use a system when
I can actually try it out.  I haven't tried out Martin's system yet,
but the fact that it exists will make it much easier to evaluate it.
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I have to agree with Ralph, although I understand and share Bruce's concern.

I think what Martin is proposing is an excellent tool. It will allow
"reasoning" about the standard itself, using Smalltalk to manipulate the
specification. I don't know what reasoning I would want to do, but the fact
that we could is crucial. I would suggest taking it one step further so that
Strings are only used for semantically free information like narrative and
names. Objects of various kinds should be used for things like the return
value specifications, parameter specifications, and so on. Objects should be
used for the meta-concepts like "<sequencedCollection>" and so on.


However, we have the concern of inserting something like this into the
critical path, delaying any progress on the standard until we can have the
whole document text encoded. Of course, the same concern arises for encoding
the document into any format other than the one already used to submit it to
the standards body for approval.

This suggests the following parallel efforts:
1) "cherry picking" of easy issues with the current standard, such as
correcting errata and enhancing it with relatively small items.
2) development of a tool for encoding the document into some manipulable
form, such as what Martin has come up with. Ideally, this tool can parse the
text of the current document, meaning that we can switch over from working
with the document in its current form at any point.



Richard Sargent
rsargent at 5x5.on.ca