Discussion List Archives

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [ddlm-group] Eliding in triple-quoted strings: Proposals C andD. .. .


On Friday, January 07, 2011 2:06 PM, Herbert J. Bernstein wrote:
[...]
> Saying that there are a large number of alternate languages against which
> we could leverage is unhelpful.

The point was that a proposal to use the semantics of a particular programming language is not by nature inherently superior to alternative proposals.

>                                 If somebody has a better, fully specified,
> unicode compatible base to propose as an alternative to Python, make that
> specific proposal.

I believe I did exactly that in my previous message.  If you find it inadequately specified then I would welcome your constructive criticism.

As for Python, one of my lesser concerns with that mechanism is that it is *not* fully specified as far as I can tell, except by testing against existing binaries.  I would be delighted to be wrong about that -- please direct us to a full, authoritative, written specification of its string literal sub-language if you know where to find one, as that would be a much firmer basis for our discussion.

>                     The proposal on the table from Ralf and supported by
>John and myself is that we adopt the Python treble quote syntax and
>semantics.

Indeed it is.  And James has proposed several alternatives, and I have proposed my own alternative.

>   Unless somebody has a STAR publication with supporting software
>to cite that already handles the treble quote, STAR compatibility would
>not seem relevant to this particular issue.

STAR compatibility is absolutely relevant, and in that regard it would be most ungracious for us to ignore what we do know or can discover about STAR's development direction.  It may be that we cannot adequately judge the STAR-compatibility of the proposals on the table, and it may be that as a group we eventually decide to abandon STAR compatibility as a CIF objective, but at this point it is still a valid and reasonable objective to me.


In any event, STAR compatibility is only one of my objections to the Python syntax.  At least as important are my objections that it is too complex and that it has at least one feature that I specifically do not want (\N{name}).


Regards,

John

--
John C. Bollinger, Ph.D.
Department of Structural Biology
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital




Email Disclaimer:  www.stjude.org/emaildisclaimer

_______________________________________________
ddlm-group mailing list
ddlm-group@iucr.org
http://scripts.iucr.org/mailman/listinfo/ddlm-group

Reply to: [list | sender only]
International Union of Crystallography

Scientific Union Member of the International Science Council (admitted 1947). Member of CODATA, the ISC Committee on Data. Partner with UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in the International Year of Crystallography 2014.

International Science Council Scientific Freedom Policy

The IUCr observes the basic policy of non-discrimination and affirms the right and freedom of scientists to associate in international scientific activity without regard to such factors as ethnic origin, religion, citizenship, language, political stance, gender, sex or age, in accordance with the Statutes of the International Council for Science.