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Re: SRFI-108/SRFI-109 special characters

This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 108 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 108 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.



On 11/18/2012 01:22 PM, John Cowan wrote:
I strongly prefer XML-style with braces.

Both forms use both braces and brackets, so I'm unclear
whether you mean "XML-style with braces for literal text"
or "XML-style with braces for escaped expressions".
The "xml-style" (red) in the proposal is the latter.
If we go with xml-style I would prefer that as it is what
the Kawa implementation currently does for XML literals.
(In a pinch I could support both [] and {} to enclose
expression in Kawa, deprecating the {} syntax.  I don't know
how many people actually use Kawa XML-literals.)

This use of braces will not
conflict with SRFI-105, nor will it conflict with the existing uses of
brackets as alternative parens.  (In Chicken, braces are also alternative
parens, unfortunately, but that can be changed.)

I don't believe either "xml-style" or "scribble-style" (or certain other
possible variations) directly conflict with SRFI-105 or brackets as
alternative parens.

In Scribble-style braces are used for (quasi-)literal text immediately
following a '@' (SRFI-109) or '@NAME' (SRFI-108).  The former doesn't
conflict with SRFI-105 at all.  The latter only conflicts if '@NAME'
is a valid standalone token followed by an SRFI-105 curly-form.
Scriblle-style SRFI-108 does not propose that standalone @NAME be valid -
it has to be immediately followed by either (EXPR...) or [EXPR...] or
{TEXT}.  Likewise, square brackets are only special following '@' (and
optionally a format-specifier).

Likewise, in XML-style {} or [] are only significant following '&',
so other uses shouldn't be a conflict.

Of course one could argue about readability or error-proneness -
some variations may be better than others.
--
	--Per Bothner
per@xxxxxxxxxxx   http://per.bothner.com/