[MacPerl] Re: open cross-platform scripting architecture (long?)

["David C. Schooley" <schooley@ee.gatech.edu>]

At 6:03 PM -0500 on 3/23/98, Chris Nandor supposedly said:
>http://www.scripting.com/davenet/98/03/perlXML.html
>
>I am not sure how interesting this is ... I know it doesn't seem
>interesting to me, but I am not a language designer.
>

Don't worry, this will eventually get around to MacPerl.

I read this earlier this afternoon, looked at something else, and then went
back and looked at it again. A while ago, I reread it, downloaded the
Frontier XML stuff, and played with it a bit.

As for where I'm coming from on this, I'm _really_ interested in XML right
now because it solves a lot of real problems.

A few comments on the Frontier/scripting.com end of things...

For all I know, Frontier itself uses OSA and the Component Manager, so I
don't know how he (Dave Winer) can claim not to know whether or not they
still exist.

Storing XML documents in databases isn't really groundbreaking. The SGML
community has been doing this for years, and a better job of it too.

I don't really like the way Frontier loads XML. It's buzzword compliant,
but it creates or overwrites the database contents before completely
checking the XML. I deliberately gave it xml that wasn't well-formed, and
it read in the data and created and filled the sub-tables anyway. (IMO,
using XML to create a database without running it through fully validating
parser is kind of silly. If that's too extreme, at least make sure that it
is well-formed first.)

Regarding the last part of Winer's article and his idea of a
multi-threaded, multi-language, database thingie, there is a group of linux
programmers (<http://www.ntlug.org/casbah/>) working on this right now.
Casbah was originally conceived as a Frontier clone for linux to be named
'Bronco'. The project began after Winer stated that there would not be a
linux port of Frontier. When Winer got wind of Bronco, he threatened one of
the organizers with legal action, claiming that the name 'Bronco' infringed
on the 'Frontier' trademark. Since then, 'Bronco' has became 'Casbah', with
design goals that are similar to Winer's 'ideas' as stated in his perl-XML
piece.

Now to MacPerl and the XML...

I think it's really important that the Mac be a player in XML. This means
that we, as users, need to keep an eye out for XML (and SGML) modules and
make sure that they are, or can be made, compatible with MacPerl. As a
start on this, I have, after much effort, compiled James Clark's SP sgml
parser library and its accompanying programs as MPW tools. The various SGML
modules use this library and/or the various programs. There are still some
bugs that need to be worked out and I don't have any more time to work on
them. I had hoped to have something working in time to put it onto the
MacPerl CD, but that probably won't happen now. If anybody is interested in
this and would like to take it forward, please contact me off-list and I'll
pass along what I have.

later,

---Dave---




=========================================================
David C. Schooley              | "Success is how high you
Ph.D. in progress              |  bounce after you hit
Georgia Tech Electric Power    |  bottom.
mailto:schooley@ece.gatech.edu |   - General George S. Patton
http://www.ee.gatech.edu/users/schooley/



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