[exprla-devel] Re: [XPL] Hmm, Another Idea...Comments?!

[reid_spencer <ras...@re...>]

--- In xpl-dev@y..., Jonathan Burns <saski@w...> wrote:
Michael Lauzon wrote:

> I think we can do two directions for XPL at once.  I still think we
> should make open source versions of Miva, Cold Fusion & Tango; but
> the
> XPL that will eventually handle that should be called XPLScript
> (XPLS).  Though they will be based on XPL, what doesn't go to XPL 
can
> go to XPLScript.  Comments, please?!
>

Now that I've got a draft of the Groves stuff done, I can attend to
this.

I've taken a look at Miva - at least, it has a few tags for arithmetic
operations.
Proof of concept.

I've scanned Allaire's Cold Fusion website, and that's about it. "70
tags!" is all
that sticks in my mind. Well, you can build a pretty big universe with
70 elements -
look what we do with 91!

Tango, I haven't even looked.


Now let me be frank.  I couldn't care less about Miva - and I couldn't
care less
about e-commerce as a whole. Cold Fusion is a target worth shooting 
at -
but
I have no desire to spend a couple of years developing the user 
service
base
which is an indispensable part of providing a system as widespread as
Cold
Fusion.

What I do care about is clarity in technical understanding. I've been
around -
I've seen that the concepts underlying software are not that hard - 
and
I'm
utterly dismayed at the black boxes around systems which deny the
comprehension
of the curious, and the unreadable academese which passes for
documenation,
and the invention of overlapping jargons by specialists; and the
combined effect
that all of these have, of making it look hard.

XML is a rare opportunity to start afresh. It's a chance to get a
thousand data formats
away from their host platforms, review them, analyse them down to 
their
base concepts,
unify them, and make the resulting simplified data language as plain 
as
day. So that
anyone can get all they need to know about data representation and
processing,
from one source, with appropriately little effort.

So that there will be no more "must have two years experience in this
buzzword we
first heard last week" shit. No more obscurantism, no more
quasi-elitism. Just simple
principles for putting things together and making them work.


XPL is my best chance to do just that.

My success with the group is something I measure by the comprehension 
I
can
convey - to the eventual users of XPL, but meantime to people like Ali
and Richard
with high intelligence and curiosity but maybe without the background.
And likewise,
what I can learn from experienced practitioners like Kurt.

To do this, it is necessary to get down to the basics, and bring them 
up
to the focus
of discussion. That's why, while jobless leisure permits me, I am
getting my head
around XPath and XPointers and CSS and XSLT and Groves, as fast as I
possibly
can. Then I will be able to say: "If we design our languages this way,
then they
will let us do that."

The result of a few of us doing so, I am fairly confident, will be 
that
we can indeed
create formats and processing languages for any purpose. Including the
duplication
of Cold Fusion functionality, if we want.

The long way round will be the shortest - because we'll be doing it 
with
undertanding,
every step.

So I think, that the shortest way to get to XPLScript as you conceive 
it
will be, if you
investigate Miva and Cold Fusion and Tango in detail - and write up 
what
you find -
and tell us what you find. Because some of us will have our strengths 
in
conceiving
applications - and some in defining basic mechanisms.

Don't split the group.

Give us the benefits of your application-level knowledge.

That way we share our strengths, while each one is free to exert 
his/her
own to
the fullest.

Sincerely
Jonathan
--- End forwarded message ---