Although I have read very little about the design of the web, things are starting to gel in my mind. At the lowest level lies the static or declarative part of the web. The html, dom, xml and json are the main languages used in the declarative part. Layered on top of this is the dynamic or procedural part of the web. Javascript and xslt are the main languages in the procedural part. The final level is the constraints or rule based part of the web, normally called stylesheets. The languages in the rule based web are css1, 2, 3 and xsl. Jquery provides a way to apply operations in this arena. I am excluding popular server side languages...too many.
What I am wondering is what is the best way to incorporate rules into a language. Vrml has routes. Uml has ocl. Is avoiding if statements and for/while loops the goal of rules languages--that syntax? That is, do a query or find, and apply the operations or rules to all returned values. Now, if I wanted to apply probabilistic or fuzzy rules to the dom, that seems fairly straightforward. Fuzz testing does this moderately well. Has there been attempts at better fuzz testing? Fuzz about fuzz? Or is brute force best? We've also seen probablistic parser generators, correct? But what about probablistic rules? Can we design an ultimate website w/o a designer? Can we use statistics to create a great solitaire player--i have a pretty good stochastic solitaire player for one version of solitaire...how about others? How does one create a great set of rules? One can create great rule POLs, but where are the authors? Something like cameron browne's thesis seems great for grid games. He is quite prolific. Can we apply the same logic to card games? Web sites? We have "The Nature of Order" by c. Alexander. Are there nile designers or fuzz testers/genetic algorithms for nile? Is fuzz testing a by product of nile design...should it be? If you want to check out the state of the art for dungeons and dragons POLs check out fantasy grounds...xml hell. We can do better.
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