Re: [SrcML] XML rationale

[Frank R. <fra...@un...>]

On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 03:15:34PM +0100, Icaro wrote:
> From the SrcML home page: "You can get the current version of the Schema
> __here__"
> .
> but the Schema is not available :-(

Sorry. The link was wrong there. I corrected it and you can find the
schema here:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/srcml/srcml/srcml.xsd?view=markup

Thanks for the notice.

> Where I can find documentation about the "rationale" about the XML
> structure you have chosen to be language independent?

The current schema is rather heavily leaned against similar efforts from
the srcML and javaML projects. There is a definite need to improve this
schema. Currently it's still too closely related to a parser's AST which
I find is rather confusing at times. Maybe I have some time during my
diploma thesis to work on that a bit.

To give a simple idea of what I'm talking about here imagine a normal
class and a method in that class. Right now the schema dictates that the
structure has to look like this:
<class ...>
  <block>
    <method...>
    </method>
  </block<
</class>

simply because the java syntax uses these { .. } brackets for the class'
body. So the block tag is not really containing any useful information
at this point and methods (as well as variable declarations) should
rather go directly under class. It's also more intuitive for XPath users
to write class[@name="MyClass"]/method[@name="foo"] instead of having
to write class[@name="MyClass"]/block/method[@name="foo"].
Of course all this will be transparent when using the supplied API, but
it's still a bit of a hazzle when working directly on the XML f.ex. with
an XSL transformation.

So in short: There's still a lot of work to do on the schema and it
can't be considered ready for handling other languages nor should it be
considered stable.

PS: Also every new language will come with new features which have not
been added to the schema yet and require a modification to it. Hopefully
we can modify the schema to a point where these modifications are only
additions (as opposed to a real modification)

-- 
Raiser, Frank
Student @ University of Ulm (www.uni-ulm.de)

We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter
hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have
the wisdom to make the right choice. (Woody Allan)