RE: DSSSL engine in LISP?

["Frank A. Christoph" <christo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joe English wrote:
> Frank A. Christoph <christo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > I think the choice to use the word "grove" was made because, in
> general, a
> > DSSSL implementation is supposed to be able to take as input several
> > documents at once: thus, there are several trees. "Forest" is the more
> > common term here, but people in the SGML world seem to have something
> > against using existing jargon.
>
> Actually, I think it's because a "grove" is a highly specialized
> type of tree.  "Tree" can refer to almost any rooted hierarchical
> data structure, but a "grove" has certain specific features, e.g.,
> each node has a list of named properties at most one of which may
> be designated the "principal content" of the node, it may have
> "reference nodes" which point across tree boundaries, it may have
> an associated grove plan, et cetera.

Well, this is a silly thing to argue about, but, though there is undoubtedly
something to what you say, it does not sit well with the fact that the
non-technical meaning of "grove" is essentially a collection of trees, nor
that the term "tree" is used in the standard to refer to something
substantially more specific than "any rooted hierarchical data structure."
Besides, "grove" is a common enough word that it would be a poor choice to
name something so concrete and specific.

--FC


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