Re: Market Penetration of FP and Haskell
"S. Alexander Jacobson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > So, if they are making sure that all platforms have a scheme interpreter, > why not make the spec language agnostic. i.e. allow the user to use any > language that can be compiled/translated into scheme (by code written in > scheme?). Your assumption is incorrect. There is no Scheme interpreter in XSL. I should have been clearer in my earlier comment: XSL is a special purpose language with a highly specialised structure (as Alexander notes, it is a little like production rules). It is not as general as either Haskell or Scheme. DSSSL, unlike XSL, was embedded in Scheme and provided both the specialised structure and general-purpose Scheme computation. I'd be very happy if XSL was as nice as Scheme! > So the user would be able to say: > http://www.haskell.org/haskell2scheme> > There is an extension mechanism in XSL to allow part of the transformation to be done in another language, roughly similar to the above. -- P
Re: Market Penetration of FP and Haskell
On Tue, 2 Mar 1999, Philip Wadler wrote: > Bad news: The proposal to split XSL refers to the current working > draft, which already contains a transformation language (Section 2) > and a style language (Section 3). Preliminary versions of the > transformation language are already in wide use (including Internet > Explorer 5 by Microsoft; LotusXSL by IBM Alphaworks; and xt, by James > Clark, editor of the XSL document). So it's way too late, there is no > chance of getting the W3C to switch to Haskell. > > Good news: The charter requires that XSL be `a declarative language', > and in fact the transformation part of XSL is a functional language. > It is largely based on DSSSL, the stylesheet language for SGML, an ISO > standard based on Scheme. (I was gobsmacked when I first discovered > Scheme was part of an ISO standard for document production!) > > Bad news: XSL is not nearly as nice as Haskell. Sigh. So, if they are making sure that all platforms have a scheme interpreter, why not make the spec language agnostic. i.e. allow the user to use any language that can be compiled/translated into scheme (by code written in scheme?). So the user would be able to say: http://www.haskell.org/haskell2scheme> The question for the compiler/interpreter writers here is 1. how hard would it be to write code that translates haskell into scheme? 2. would this translator be excessively slow? 3. would the resulting scheme be excesively slow/large? If the answer to these questions is (easy, no, no), then this minor change would dramatically increase the language options for the whole web community. If the answer to these questions are hard,slow,slow and/or large, then is there a well defined VM which declarative languages like scheme, haskell, prolog &tc. can target? For example, why not use a JVM that allows tail-call recursion, as the target machine? or the Ocaml VM? Such a generic language system would benefit more than just the haskell (or declarative programming community). I would guess that translator writers could define declarative subsets of C, Java, Perl, TCL, etc. It also seems like XSL sort of resembles a production system so languages like Clips/Jess might be better suited to process an XML stream (for some applications) than any of the functional programming langues. In any case, wedding everybody to one language seems like a mistake. (e.g. Java) > PS. If anyone has any suggestions about *small and reasonable* changes > to the XSL working draft that would be an improvement, please let me know. I guess that is the question. I don't know enough about language design to answer. Are the above suggestions *small and reasonable*? -Alex- > XSL working draft: http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl > XSL W3C home page: http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/ > > --- > Philip Wadler [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/~wadler > 600 Mountain Ave, room 2T-402 office: +1 908 582 4004 > Murray Hill, NJ 07974-0636 fax: +1 908 582 5857 > USA home: +1 908 626 9252 > --- > ___ S. Alexander Jacobson Shop.Com 1-212-697-0184 voiceThe Easiest Way To Shop
Re: Market Penetration of FP and Haskell
"S. Alexander Jacobson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > There is a campaign going on to separate XSL (eXtensible style > language) into two separate languages > 1. a transformation language > 2. a style language > > I suggest that now is the opportunity to make a convincing case that the > transformational language should be a functional programming language. > HoF, Laziness and statelessness are ideal properties for such a language. > The existing XSL spec was somewhat influenced by scheme, but a > transformational language has stronger consistency requirements and should > be typechecked so Haskell seems like a good choice. I have bad news, good news, bad news, and good news. Bad news: The proposal to split XSL refers to the current working draft, which already contains a transformation language (Section 2) and a style language (Section 3). Preliminary versions of the transformation language are already in wide use (including Internet Explorer 5 by Microsoft; LotusXSL by IBM Alphaworks; and xt, by James Clark, editor of the XSL document). So it's way too late, there is no chance of getting the W3C to switch to Haskell. Good news: The charter requires that XSL be `a declarative language', and in fact the transformation part of XSL is a functional language. It is largely based on DSSSL, the stylesheet language for SGML, an ISO standard based on Scheme. (I was gobsmacked when I first discovered Scheme was part of an ISO standard for document production!) Bad news: XSL is not nearly as nice as Haskell. Sigh. Good news: Malcolm Wallace and Colin Runciman at York are working on a Haskell library for manipulating XML. If the transformation and style languages are separated (which seems likely to happen), then that will make it easier for users to substitute Haskell for the transformation part of XSL, if they choose. -- Phil Wadler (member of the XSL working group) PS. If anyone has any suggestions about *small and reasonable* changes to the XSL working draft that would be an improvement, please let me know. XSL working draft: http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl XSL W3C home page: http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/ --- Philip Wadler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/~wadler 600 Mountain Ave, room 2T-402 office: +1 908 582 4004 Murray Hill, NJ 07974-0636 fax: +1 908 582 5857 USA home: +1 908 626 9252 ---
Market Penetration of FP and Haskell
There is a campaign going on to separate XSL (eXtensible style language) into two separate languages 1. a transformation language 2. a style language I suggest that now is the opportunity to make a convincing case that the transformational language should be a functional programming language. HoF, Laziness and statelessness are ideal properties for such a language. The existing XSL spec was somewhat influenced by scheme, but a transformational language has stronger consistency requirements and should be typechecked so Haskell seems like a good choice. The proposal is at http://www.prescod.net/xsl/petition/ Current Comments are at http://www.prescod.net/xsl/petition/comments.html Here is an opportunity to bring FP to the masses. I suggest that people here interested in having Haskell (or some FP) built into their web servers and web browsers at very least go read what is posted so far and become active in this process. -Alex- ___ S. Alexander Jacobson Shop.Com 1-212-697-0184 voiceThe Easiest Way To Shop
