From: Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@...>
Date: 2011-05-16T20:24:35+09:00
Subject: Re: canonical/syntax-diagrams representation.

On 16 May 2011 11:42,  <no.top.post@gmail.com> wrote:
> I started investigating ruby.
> It's very informal, which is NOT suitable for computing.

Strange that, plenty of people seem to be using it just for that
purpose. What do you think it should be used for?

> The chatty syntax introduction that: IF can come before
> or after, as you like, and arguments can be bracketed
> or not, as you like and block can use "}" or END; is BAD!

The trailing IF is a very old form of syntax, it certainly goes back
to Basic on the VAX it might go back even further than that (Algol
maybe). We seem to have coped somehow.

'{ ... }' and 'do ... end' are slightly different.

> The bloke who heads 'intentional programming' wrote a
> good article explaining why <having too many degrees
> of freedom> makes the task more difficult, as you already
> know intuitively.

I suspect that your intuition and ours are at some variance.

Who is this 'bloke', does he have a name? How about a link to the article.

> Because this is my Nth programming language, I just
> want to make a <template driven editor> for my `mc`;
> where the basic structures can be merely filled in.

If you were a programmer rather than a troll you woud have completed
this task by now and moved on.

> We don't want to be bothered with ANOTHER arbitrary
> syntax -- do we?

Who is this 'we' you speak of, it certainly better not include me.

> IMO the clearest syntax representation ever, was the
> syntax-diagram format of PASCAL which was used in
> the 70s.

The syntax diagram was EBNF and had nothing to do with Pascal other
than the syntax diagram for Pascal is available in EBNF. As are the
diagrams for several other languages.

> Can anybody point me to an on-line minimal formal
> syntax for ruby, so as to not rely on the chatty tutors.

If this is all you wanted to ask then what was with all the preamble?

> We want a train-time-table format; not a novel.

Again, show is this 'we' you talk about?

> Thanks,

No thanks