Re: [Visionaries] DG-Scheme

[Peter Minten]

Dean Michael Berris wrote:

> however, i would just like to ask if the same stuff said here couldn't be done
> in XML? i mean instead of defining a scheme-style (or declarative language 
> style
> which resembles LISP -- because this is what i recognize...) language for DG,
> could we just come up with a DTD for XML which exhibits the same functionality
> as the proposed language?

Well, since the basic form of a LISPy program can be translated XML this would
be possible, but it would go at the cost of readability and compactness I guess.

> this IMHO could be implemented faster, and a DG-XML interpreter could be coded
> and implemented just as easily as a webservice which accepts XML documents for
> execution.

The parsing stage is really not the big problem. Using Flex and Bison you can
really do that fast. The problem will sooner be getting the code to run fast (I
fear the flexibility in DG-Scheme might create a drag on performance).

> as a side note however, it would be interesting if someone would want to go
> ahead and code a DG-Scheme interpreter and make it part of the official DotGNU
> implementation. I personally would like to help out, and learn a lot of stuff
> regardin imeplementation of interpreters. ;-)

At the moment important issues in the core of the language are still being
resolved, until that process is finished and the OO and metadata models are
truly stable it would be risky to start building an interpreter.

Designing the interpreter and building the basic parser (syntax isn't likely to
change much) could be started on however. But still I don't think starting on
the interpreter in this early fase is a good idea.

Greetings,

Peter