From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id PAA03561; Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:15:27 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA03969 for ; Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:15:27 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from verdot.inria.fr (verdot.inria.fr [128.93.11.7]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id g9BDFQ517108 for ; Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:15:26 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from ddr@localhost) by verdot.inria.fr (8.9.3/8.9.3) id PAA00901 for caml-list@inria.fr; Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:15:26 +0200 Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:15:26 +0200 From: Daniel de Rauglaudre To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Future of Camlp4 Message-ID: <20021011151526.A801@verdot.inria.fr> References: <20021006235450.GB5700@kiefer.ai.univie.ac.at> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from kgergely@mlabdial.hit.bme.hu on Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 01:34:39PM +0200 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Hi, On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 01:34:39PM +0200, Kontra, Gergely wrote: > I agree, camlp4 IS useful. (Exploring the alternative syntax) > I just afraid of developing in ocaml, if there exists two version of the > syntax. No: there is no two versions of the syntax, just one. OCaml has its syntax, and it is the official one. Let us compare with X window and the window managers. The X server does not give by default any window manager: when you start X, you just have a background and a mouse, and you can move it, that's all. X can receive orders to create windows, move them, but by default, it does nothing. This is like the core of OCaml: the semantics. Now, it is impossible to have a semantics without syntax. The same way, it is impossible to have a system of windows without window manager. Hence, there is a syntax, a given syntax. It could be compared with, say, the window manager KDE. Now, you man consider that KDE has many defaults. You may be insterested in playing with "window managers", i.e. "syntax tools". This is the gool of Camlp4. OCaml does not need Camlp4, and it seems that the tendancy of the Cristal team does not include experiments and developments about syntax. ---- But Camlp4 can be useful even if you want to stay inside the official syntax: you can do your small syntax extensions, you can use quotations, you can use extensible grammars, all of that in the official syntax. BTW, the manual and tutorial of Camlp4 gives its examples in the official syntax. The revised syntax, and, the Scheme syntax are just games with Camlp4. Games or... research! We want to proove that many things can be done with syntax. Perhaps, latter, a good consensus can happen with one of the syntax Camlp4 developped. For the moment, it is not the case: the OCaml team prefers keeping its syntax, despite its drawbacks that the Revised syntax tries to fix. I add that having its own syntx is not a problem of communication: Camlp4 provides a pretty printer in the official syntax. You can therefore understand the programs of the other people. And the Revised syntax is close to the official syntax: you can read it directly. > Another thing, that bothers me is the do { } syntax. It seems a bit > silly mixture of some shell and C syntax, I think either do ... done > or { ... } would be a good choice (or support both, this way bash > and C programmers will be happy ;)) Ha, if you are interested in the "Revised syntax", we can talk about its choices, indeed. For the moment, I did not found people really interested in making a "team" about a "New Revised syntax". The main reason is that people are not shocked by the same things! We could not know what are the points we want to talk about. > Ooops, so I'd like to know what is the tendecy: will the alternative > syntax be a new standard, or users should use the old syntax, and the > alternative syntax supporting is their problem? IMHO, the OCaml team is very very far from adopting a new syntax. But using alternative syntaxes cannot be considered as a "problem" thanks to the flexibility of Camlp4: I wrote GeneWeb entirely in Revised syntax (45000 lines of code) and I am sure that it prevents nobody to make changes in it. -- Daniel de RAUGLAUDRE daniel.de_rauglaudre@inria.fr http://cristal.inria.fr/~ddr/ ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners