Re: Proposal: (node ...) construction rule type

[Paul Prescod <papresco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David Megginson wrote:
> What a great idea!  It would provide an elegant primitive for the
> existing construction rules -- I'd guess that they could all be
> implemented in terms of it (in some cases, with the addition of 'if'
> statements and the 'next-match' procedure).  Would anyone care to try?
> (Hint: don't forget the priority expressions.)

I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader. You are right that it is
certainly in the "Scheme" (and DSSSL) tradition to describe language
constructs in terms of more primitive constructs.
 
> The problem is that there is no mechanism in DSSSL for adding
> construction rules, the way that there is for adding flow-object
> classes and external procedures.  If James modifies Jade to include
> the 'node' construction rule, I suspect that his program will no
> longer be DSSSL-compliant (at least, until the standard changes).
> Then again, he could provide a command-line option to disable the
> extension for full DSSSL compliance.

James has other DSSSL extensions. As long as he can accept a standard
stylesheet Jade would be DSSSL compliant.

Anyhow, I think that all of the likely DSSSL implementors are on this
list. If there is a big flaw in the proposal then they will probably say
so. If not, they can implement it. As you point out, it doesn't seem
difficult.
 
 Paul Prescod

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