Re: [BRL] Improvements?

[<br...@us...>]

Chris <ch...@bi...> writes:

> My net connection's been down for a while, so I don't know if I've
> missed anything, but it looks like not I guess...

Nothing missed.  People who try to browse the archives before
subscribing might think the brl-users list doesn't exist.  My support
request is still sitting there at sourceforge.

> Your argument seems to be that the [] syntax is somehow more universal
> than other syntaxes. I can't see the reasoning. From that point of view
> it's just a choice between () being special and [] being special.

I probably shouldn't have sent the whole appendix.  The pertinent
section is "Why ]string[?", which I'll quote below.

> Anyway, if I devised a way so the user could choose parsing schemes in
> brl to accept my proposed idea, would you accept it as a patch?

Yes.

> br...@us... wrote:
> > 
> > @section Why ]string[?
> > 
> > Even for someone accustomed to Scheme, one aspect of BRL's syntax is
> > confusing.  An expression like (string-length ]string[) looks like
> > mismatched parentheses.  Yet there is good reason to allow this syntax.
> > 
> > In other compiled template systems like JSP, literal text oustide of
> > delimiters is converted into print statements.  These are combined with
> > the statements inside the delimiters to produce source code that is
> > compiled.  This allows for interesting uses of the template system, e.g.
> > 
> > @example
> > <% for (i=0; i<10; i++)
> >    @{
> > %>  <li> <%=name[i]%> likes <%=color[i]%>
> > <% @} %>
> > @end example
> > 
> > This allows for the concise template syntax to be used with flow
> > constructs such as loops and conditionals.  Note that the <% @} %> looks
> > mismatched, but makes sense when you know how things work.  It's also
> > nice for a non-programmer looking through the code and simply scanning
> > for %> to see where the programming stops and the HTML starts.
> > 
> > BRL, thanks to Scheme, takes this concept one step further.  Its concise
> > template syntax can be used not only with flow constructs, but within
> > any language construct.  Unlike any other template language, BRL lets
> > the same syntax to be used to construct not only the HTML page to be
> > output, but also e-mail messages, complex SQL queries, or anything else
> > that mixes static and dynamic content.
> > 
> > For this reason, one cannot treat BRL as Yet-Another-Language Server
> > Pages.  One's thinking has to be adjusted.  As a starting point, one
> > might look at the JSP example above and imagine @code{(brl } and
> > @code{)} in place of @{ and @}.  Then spend some time looking at the
> > e-mail example in this manual (@pxref{Sending e-mail}).  A relatively
> > small investment of time acclimating to BRL syntax will repay handsomely
> > in a powerfully expressive tool for writing dynamic web pages.

-- 
Bruce R. Lewis				http://brl.sourceforge.net/