On 2/7/04 at 9:11 AM -0500, Bruce Lilly wrote:
Two more points related to the 2822 grammar:
1. mixing vs. separating obs- and non-obs constructs
2. clarification of "obs"
I'm still going over the unstructured stuff from the last message
(which look good from my first read), but on these two points
specifically:
I think it's clearer to keep the obs- constructs out of the non-obs
productions. Indeed, it becomes clearer still if that is pursued to
its logical extreme:
[...]
i.e. the obs- constructs appear only in the obs-productions, rather
than as an alternative in non-obs productions.
Though it may be clearer for someone actually coding a parsing
engine, I'm not at all sure that it's clearer for other folks. I like
being able to read through the "generation" grammar and find forward
references to a difference in the "parser" grammar. I also kind of
like the idea that you can't read the "generation" grammar and miss
that there's some work to do in the parsing end. Finally, in terms of
the prose, I think it will make it more confusing: In the current
layout, any time you see "obs-" in section 4, you're going to see an
explanation of that "obs-" construct. If we were to switch it, the
explanations would be scattered about. I for one would rather leave
this as-is.
The intent becomes further clarified with some name changes,
especially for non-native English readers and/or casual readers:
gen-comments = "Comments" ":" gen-unstructured CRLF
parse-comments = "Comments" *WSP ":" parse-unstructured CRLF
etc.
to avoid a misunderstanding ("it's obsolete, therefore I don't have
to deal with it at all").
I'm un-moved on this. I think having two labels makes things worse
(clarity-wise), and I don't see "misunderstandings" of the "obs-"
really being a problem.
pr
--
Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
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