Han-Wen, you wrote Tuesday, September 04, 2012 2:58 PM Subject: Re: how to make decisions?
> On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 5:03 AM, Trevor Daniels <[email protected]> wrote: > >> David, it wasn't anything /you/ said; it was Han-Wen's reply which >> dismissed my cautionary offering as "bed-shedding" and referring >> to a sneering video about other syntax failures. Which, incidentally, >> illustrated my real point (which he missed) ideally. > > I'm sorry - I have been doing these kinds of syntax discussions for > too long, and have too little time for them now. I can appreciate that. Thanks for following this up. > The video is intended to illustrate how a small features of a language > may make sense (ie. was created with the best intentions) when viewed > on small scale, but makes the language as a whole confounding. For I'm quite familiar with the concepts of grammar, parser design and BNF. In the '60s I learnt my first programming language, Atlas Autocode, largely by reading its formal description used by the compiler-compiler on the Ferranti Atlas computer at Manchester. > If I missed your point, can you state it more explicitly? I can see now my point was not stated clearly. It was: At this stage in the discussions it is important to be clear about what problems we are trying to solve, "In this discussion we must always consider what it is we are trying to optimise." I take your point that the syntax should be unambiguous, but I don't see why this should dominate the discussion. Improving the syntax from the point of view of usability is equally if not more important; certainly those considerations and discussions should come before thinking how they might be handled in the parser. When you and Jan first started thinking about the LilyPond language I'm sure you began by considering how music could best be encoded. Only later did you devise the precise syntax. We should continue in the same way. So what problems do the users have, exactly? We should address this question first. Janek apparently has his list, which would be a good start. But we should not invent problems where they don't exist. I've probably read every email on the user list for the last 4 years, and inconsistent parser rules have not figured prominently. Another example is the considerable discussion so far about pre- and post-fix notation. Again, has this been a problem prominent on the user list? I don't think so. So why try to solve it? Especially in ways that would screw all existing code. In fact, I don't think /users/ have any serious problems with the syntax as it currently exists, other than getting to grips with it initially. So I'd be happy to let David continue his work straightening out the parser, which is good, and improving the functionally, even better. But if we are to have a discussion about syntax let's first list the problems we need to solve, and reach agreement on which ones need to be tackled. Then we know what it is we are trying to optimise. Trevor _______________________________________________ lilypond-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel
