Hi George
Point well taken. I too am an avid proponent/user of ANTLR, having used it
since
its PCCTS days.
I appreciate all that Terrence and his gang have done for the cause.
And I too am a small business owner trying to bootstrap some efforts on my time
away from my day job.
I do remember having used ANTLR 3.1 at my previous employer's over two years
back and now recall
going through the same discovery process. I had completely forgotten about this
one aspect of the
command line invocation and it came back to bite me in the you-know-where.
When I sent out this email I was hoping that at the least there could/would be
one or two lines added
in one or more of the multiple documentation sources that deal with command
line
options and invocation.
BUT I STILL THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO CONSIDER DEVELOPING THE C++
RUNTIME.
Cheers
Ramanand Mandayam
________________________________
From: George Shannon <[email protected]>
To: Loring Craymer <[email protected]>; Ramanand Mandayam
<[email protected]>; [email protected]; [email protected]
Sent: Sun, July 11, 2010 8:50:05 AM
Subject: RE: [antlr-dev] Confusing class names in antlr-3.2.jar
It appears that the reason for some confusion is because the documentation is
not complete in certain key areas, so to speak.
For example, I tried to create a C++ runtime for ANTLR, and got to the point
where I was ready to test, the final step being creating the StringTemplate for
the C++ runtime.
This final step, i.e. StringTemplate, was a disaster. There is hardly any
documentation available. I was eventually in the mode of trying to create the
C++ version using pure trial and error. I asked Terry about it and the answer
was that there is not enough demand for documentation to justify the investment
(that is, no excellent resources like the books he has written for ANTLR).
I assumed StringTemplate documentation was available since I already had
Terry’s
books on ANTLR. I was wrong.
So frankly I dropped the project.
While there is a C runtime available, having a C++ runtime would have been
awesome for us, and perhaps a few others (one person was very interested), BUT,
without some serious documentation it ain’t gonna happen.
Open source is great, but without serious documentation in ALL the right places
it is difficult to adopt; “difficult” being equivalent to “expensive” in terms
of labor and time/lost opportunity.
Please be patient while I digress.
Many years ago I worked as an engineer at what was then McDonnell Douglas (now
Boeing). I worked space programs – hypersonic space vehicles,
single-stage-to-orbit stuff to replace the Space Shuttle.
People in the industry had a saying: “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”
What really makes those birds fly is: funding.
I am suspicious that, in some ways, the same may apply to things like
documentation (StringTemplate) – no bucks (or free labor), then no
documentation
(and no Buck Rogers).
I make these comments as a small business startup trying to compete with the
big
dogs with deep pockets.
Please note that I’m not criticizing Terry or any of the devoted people working
on ANTLR and making it an excellent open source product. They are working hard
within constraints.
This is just my two cents worth on how the product adds value – to take it to
the next level may not involve ONLY product development (i.e., new or improved
functionality). It may involve simply providing more documentation to help
make
it easy to learn and ADOPT the product in innovative ways.
Best Regards,
George Shannon
________________________________
From:[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Loring Craymer
Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2010 2:35 AM
To: Ramanand Mandayam; [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [antlr-dev] Confusing class names in antlr-3.2.jar
ANTLR 3 is written in ANTLR 2, so the jar contains both ANTLR 2 under antlr.*
and ANTLR 3 under org.antlr.*.
--Loring
>From:Ramanand Mandayam <[email protected]>
>To: [email protected]
>Cc: [email protected]
>Sent: Sat, July 10, 2010 11:25:22 PM
>Subject: [antlr-dev] Confusing class names in antlr-3.2.jar
>Hi
>
>I downloaded the latest release (antlr-3.2.jar) of the runtime jar files and
>tried to generate a lexer.
>I ran into some errors which I was looking into and found this strange
behavior.
>
>If I invoke the main method in the class 'antlr.Tool' as shown in the command
>line below,
>
> java -cp /usr/local/antlr/antlr-3.2.jar antlr.Tool mylexer.g
>the tool assumes that I want to use ANTLR v2.7.7
>
>However, if I invoke teh main method in the class 'org.antlr.Tool' as shown in
>the command line below,
> java -cp /usr/local/antlr/antlr-3.2.jar org.antlr.Tool mylexer.g
>the tool assumes that I want to use ANTLR v3.2
>
>This is very confusing and I have not yet been able to identify any portion
>of
>the documentation that
>describes this difference. Can we perhaps make this distinction clear in
>either
>the README or some
>other equivalent documentation describing the command line?
>
>Cheers
>
>Ramanand
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