On 7 Apr 2002, Andrew C. Oliver wrote: > I still think a declarative approach can be prescribed. There are > plenty of non-declarative approaches out there, and we don't really need > one more. One should differentiate Cocoon is a "next-generation" > approach. Don't dirty it with a kludge. Meaning don't add something > that is to Cocoon what JSP is to Object Oriented Programming and Java. > ;-)
[...] > > 2) reduce the creation of 'multipaths' to a minimum (a 'multipath' is > > created when there is "more than one way to do it". It's up to *us* to > > identify the best way to do something, it's not the user's concern!) > > +1 How does this go together? Prescribing something and reducing multipaths will automatically induce a procedural algorithm. Declarative semantics mean that you declare a set of rules and let the data drive the application. The data selects the rules and a high-level processor applies them. Thus it is the nature of declarative semantics that multipaths exist and that the application developer has no interest in dealing with them. Even more, he has no power to prescribe a certain path, only the data and the rules determine solution paths. What's more, the rules processor will even backtrack. That means that if along a certain path no solution is found, it will go back to the last choice point and try a different path. I'm not sure how useful this paradigm is for specifying flow in a web app and whether it is even possible. But if you really want a "next-generation", declarative thing, then you have to stop trying to control everything. Declarative concepts mean that as an application developer you cannot just say "do this now" at any arbitrary point. If you want full control and pre-determined paths, you are probably better of with a procedural approach. Ulrich --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
