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Re: Improved template syntax and connection with XForms (WAS:

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Improved template syntax and connection with XForms (WAS: InnerXml is like printf)
• From: Arjun Ray <aray@n...>
• Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 17:36:49 +0000
• In-reply-to: <200209221452.52264.miles@m...>
• References: <00a901c2618d$a322b900$0400a8c0@gandalf> <noqqousblu28fdqe90uurs4c3l5vpqiplb@4...> <200209220953.37426.miles@m...> <200209221452.52264.miles@m...>

Miles Sabin <miles@m...> wrote:

| Jeni Tennison mailed me offline with an excellent suggestion which I 
| think significantly improves on my proposal.
| 
| She pointed out that we could actually use XPath syntax directly, [...]
| which on expansion looks like this,
| 
|   html[
|     head[
|       title = 'Example 3' and
|       link[@rel = 'stylesheet' and
|            @type = 'text/css' and
|            @uri = '/ss/style.css']] and
|     body/p = 'Hello World']
| 
| which, beautifully, can be used as a selector for the newly created 
| element.
| 
| There's a small cost in that using XPath is slightly more verbose 
| (" and " rather than ","), but that's more than offset, IMO, by the fact 
| that there are no syntactic innovations.

I have to agree that XPath syntax would be a winner on pragmatic grounds.
But I can't resist saying that I find the syntax somewhat cluttered.  An
"operator style" syntax works just as well:

   html =
     head = 
       title = 'Example 3' ;
     + link =
         rel @ 'stylesheet'
       + type @ 'text/css'
       + uri @ '/ss/style.css' ;;
   + body =
       p = 'Hello World' ;;;

For which, a minimum reduced yacc spec (with 15 states) could be:

 %token NAME STRING
 %%
 wff
  : NAME '=' elembody ';' 
  ;
 elembody
  : elemitem
  | elemitem  '+' elembody
  ;
 elemitem
  : NAME  '='  elembody ';'
  | NAME  '@'  STRING  
  | STRING
  ;
 %%

• References:
  • RE: Underwhelmed (WAS: XOM micro tutorial)
    • From: "Aaron Skonnard" <aarons@d...>
  • Re: InnerXml is like printf (WAS: Underwhelmed)
    • From: Arjun Ray <aray@n...>
  • Re: InnerXml is like printf (WAS: Underwhelmed)
    • From: Miles Sabin <miles@m...>
  • Improved template syntax and connection with XForms (WAS: InnerXml is like printf)
    • From: Miles Sabin <miles@m...>

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