Re: [Introspector-developers] Stuff for the SchemeBook

[Peter M. <pet...@wa...>]

James Michael DuPont wrote:
> Hi Peter,
> Here are some questions :
> 
> 1. is it possible to write the language and the book in synch, so when
> you are writing your book, you are writing the docs for the language?

Hehe, I'm afraid you misunderstood something. I was referring to the FSEDU
SchemeBook and accidentaly posted to introspector-dev instead of fsedu-dev.

As for SilverScheme, it's undergoing evaluation at the moment. I'm pretty sure
it's as good as I can make it, but it still has some ugly parts. SilverScheme is
not ascetically pleasing with it's need to use owner in cases when you would
normally say 'this'. Also a few issues have to be worked out with regards to
serialization, call/cc, mixins and other complicated stuff. The strict object
model used can sometimes be a real pain in the behind.

The last few hurdles probably won't be a problem, it's mostly getting old parts
of the language up-to-date with the new language semantics (mixins for example
were defined in a time when there were binding objects).

As for the language docs, I'm inclined to make that a wiki process (my thought
processes are chaotic, a wiki is chaotic, perfect fit :-). With the current
stability of the language it's likely that the notes I make are pretty final and
can be compiled into some form of a manual for daring people (I'm really not the
guy to write docs for dummies, and I don't expect dummies to be smart enough to
use SilverScheme ;-).

Oh, and let me tell you about a few neat new features. I've added optional
arguments and keywords through an understandable syntax where keywords are
signaled by putting a ':' for their name and optional arguments by putting a '
for their name.

The biggest improvement of the last weeks is something else though: monitors.
The SilverScheme interpreter will not communicate with the user through basic
console I/O but through an attached monitor. A monitor is a program that
communicates with the SilverScheme interpreter through RDF messages. The
interface for monitors is really powerful, you could easily do all introspection
by attaching an introspector as a monitor. For a SilverScheme program a monitor
is just a function that returns a value, but monitors can interrupt execution
and do stack dumps, etc. Multiple monitors may exist on a single thread, if
(call-monitor) is called by another monitor the monitor control simply passes to
the newly called monitor and returns after the newly called monitor is done).
Multiple threads may also have multiple monitors.

> 2. scheme might be very useful for the processing of introspector ast
> nodes. So can we put a priority on using redland rdf dbstores as the
> input to the scheme engine? 
> 
> Then I can rewrite my cwm programs in scheme and run them.

My current priority for the SilverScheme engine input is RDF since it allows
development of the eval function in another language for the time being. So
there is no problems with that. You must remember however that the input is in
S3 (SilverScheme Serialization) format and that SilverScheme is not a logic
language like CWM RDF.

> 3. The Wiki :
> 
> I have been talking to e-kyle about splitting cost of a real provider.
> If we do this write the entire gnufans site can be rehosted.

Cool, do you think there will be room for some SilverScheme stuff there? I'm
going to need a wiki for the design process of the interpreter.

> 4. Rdf do you think it is possible to write the book and the wiki all
> in an RDF syntax. I have been dreaming of the way to unify all these
> formats into one.

Hehe, if you can build a translator from a YAML like syntax to RDF. RDF is not
nice to write in, but a YAML like document style is. I think that a YAML variant
aimed at RDF would do wonders for these kinds of things (books and wiki's), the
ease of YAML, the power of RDF. Normal YAML uses a tree model btw so it's not
very good for graphs. Would a wiki with required passworded accounts be possible
btw? It would make the copyright matter easier.

I attached some wiki pages I've been writing already, they are probably not
quite book-ready but will do for a small manual for daring users.

Greetings,

Peter

PS: I've also attached a little example of how RDF could be processed in 
SilverScheme.