From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp-feed.chiark.greenend.org.uk!ewrotcd!newsfeed.xs3.de!news.jacob-sparre.dk!franka.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!.POSTED.rrsoftware.com!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Error in draft 17 grammar Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2019 17:40:28 -0600 Organization: JSA Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: <3daa4a66-8471-4ed6-a2d3-d3a49c53252b@googlegroups.com> Injection-Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2019 23:40:28 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: franka.jacob-sparre.dk; posting-host="rrsoftware.com:24.196.82.226"; logging-data="3898"; mail-complaints-to="news@jacob-sparre.dk" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.7246 Xref: reader01.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:55614 Date: 2019-02-20T17:40:28-06:00 List-Id: "Lucretia" wrote in message news:3daa4a66-8471-4ed6-a2d3-d3a49c53252b@googlegroups.com... ... > I don't know what Scribe is, but it sounds ancient. Have you ever thought >about updating to something else like ASCIIDoc(tor)? We haven't used Scribe since Ada 95. For the Corrigendum, I built a tool (in Ada, of course) that creates Txt and HTML and RTF files. But it was designed to use the original source code, so the Scribe syntax and commands fo the most part remain. I happened to be looking at the code last night, and I see I've actually added three such pairs to the original ones. The latest problem was trying to put the Google Analytics snipet into the header files - it actually used all 6 of the surrounding characters, so I had to allow '%' as seventh set. Since the tool is in Ada, it will be usable so long as Ada exists (and no one ought to care about the Ada standard *after* Ada exists!). Other tools can't deal with the paragraph numbers - especially our insertion scheme - and the handling of AARM text (which of course doesn't show when one is generating the Standard). Also, of course, there is just under 7 megabytes of source code for the AARM/RM. Changing all of that to some other tool would require a heck of a lot of work. > Also, as you've started to add '[' and ']' to the grammar, any change of > doing the same for ',' ';' '(' ')' '=>' etc? It'd make the grammar > clearer. Doing that generally would be a significant amount of work (there are a lot of such productions), and there's probably better uses for that time (such as changing English into preconditions/postconditions for language-defined subprograms). The reason for quoting square brackets (and the vertical bar) is to avoid confusion with the characters that have a special meaning in the syntax. That's not true for anything else other than the curly brackets, which of course aren't used in the Ada syntax. There used to be a hack (no better description for it) to let vertical bar be used in the syntax, and we've now gotten rid of that. So, while I certainly would never say never to anything, I doubt that it would be a priority. Randy.