At 20:14 09/06/2004 +0100, Geoff Caplan wrote:
>Hi folks, > >Perhaps I'm just being dim, but I can't find anything in the >documentation about expressions & conditions. Keyword searching fails >to throw anything up, and there are no cross-references from the >control structure dict entries. Can anyone help me out here?
I see several people are already trying to help Geoff, but I wonder whether he is asking a question that's been in the back of my mind since I first saw HyperCard - is there a formal description of the language (in RR's case, Transcript) anywhere to be found, so that we would know **exactly** what an expression is, what a condition is, what a chunk is, etc. and could therefore have the foundation of the ability to write correct code first time through? I think the answer is 'no' but people who are more into discussing xTalk in a wider context may contradict me.
IMHO this lack of a formal description makes it easy to extend the language, but it reduces ease-of-use, or at least ease-of-introduction, for people who have been brought up in more academic environments. I've got used to it, but I must say I did make a huge number of simple syntactic mistakes and mistaken semantic assumptions for the first few months of xTalk use. This was in fact in SuperCard, which AFAIR is in pretty much the same state as RR when it comes to the lack of a formal language description.
Graham
---------------------------------------------------
Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK & France
_______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
