On Thursday, March 7, 2002, at 01:14 PM, Andre Beck wrote:
Match seems to have the beginnings of boolean logic embedded; I see
AND (multiple matches specified) and NOT (not-matches) and even OR
(just flattened out to multiple rules). IMHO It would be good if
this were explicit; e.g., <and> ... </and> <or> ... </or> <not> ...
</not> wrappers around matches.
We tried that when we first came up with IRML, but it get's really messy
if you have a lot of conditions.
Messy in what way? If you mean 'looks/reads messy', I'd ask whether IRML
is supposed to be primarily human-readable or machine-readable. Ideally,
of course, it would be both, but IMHO a machine-unambiguous
representation is better if you have to make a tradeoff; it can always
be presented or transformed to a more human-palatable form. Directly
expressing the boolean logic gives the most clarity and flexibility in
the rules; implying it leads to a less capable and more ambiguous
format, IMO.
Cheers,
--
Mark Nottingham
http://www.mnot.net/