[liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: Please don't misunderstand the importance of what John Boyer is saying
- From: "John J. Boyer" <john.boyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 15:09:37 -0500
We've been over regex expressions many times. How would they handle the
attributes that liblouis assigns to characters? How would they handle
Unicode? How would they access the typeform parameter? Why hasn't anyone
provided examples of their use?
The current context-multipass language has been in use for years, and
nobody has objected to it until now.
John B
On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 06:44:56PM +0000, Ken Perry wrote:
> This could all be handled by a regex opp code in the current liblouis though.
>
> Ken
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Susan Jolly
> Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2013 2:15 PM
> To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [liblouis-liblouisxml] Please don't misunderstand the importance of
> what John Boyer is saying
>
> I think we are using the term "scripting language" in two different ways that
> is leading to misunderstanding and confusion,
>
> Certain existing programming languages such as Python are often referred to
> as scripting languages. You can read more about the use of this term in this
> Wikipedia article:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scripting_language
>
> I believe John Boyer is using this term as a synonym for what is also called
> a Domain Specific Language or DSL. He is not advocating developing a language
> such as Python. The concern is that we definitely need some high-level and
> uniform way for people familiar with the rules of a particular braille code
> to express or encode the possibly quite complex rules for the use of
> indicators in that code.
>
> As an example of the complexity of these rules I will contrast some of the
> rules for the use of the number sign in American English braille and in UEB.
>
> In our current English braille (EBAE) a single number sign is used before a
> braille sequence to indicate integers, real numbers, and also numeric
> sequences. A numeric sequence consists of digits plus one or more of six
> special characters: colon, comma, decimal, fraction line, hyphen, and slash.
> That is, the scope of the number sign is not terminated by any of these six
> characters but it is terminated by a space, slash, letter, etc.
>
> There are also various rules for when a letter sign is needed if a letter or
> group of letters immediately follows a number. In older versions of EBAE a
> letter sign was only needed to avoid ambiguity where the same braille cell
> could represent a letter or digit. The latest rule is that a letter sign is
> always needed if a letter immediate follows a number or is joined to it by a
> hyphen with the exception that if a single letter is immediately followed by
> another number sign, then the letter sign is not required.
>
> The rules for the use of the UEB numeric indicator are quite different from
> the EBAE ones. In the first place, the indicator is actually two cells.
> The first cell is always the standard dots 3456. The second cell can be a
> digit, a period, a decimal point, a comma, a space, or, if necessary, a
> second dots 3456. There are six symbols that don't end the scope of the
> indicator. Also the dot 5 numerical space doesn't end the scope if it is
> immediately followed by another digit. The UEB numeric indicator also
> establishes a special Grade 1 mode unless terminated by a hyphen or dash.
> This means that in many cases contractions cannot be used immediately after
> numbers.
>
> I hope it is clear from just this one example that this is a very serious
> issue that is going to require a lot of thought.
>
> Susan Jolly
>
>
>
>
>
>
> For a description of the software, to download it and links to project pages
> go to http://www.abilitiessoft.com
> For a description of the software, to download it and links to
> project pages go to http://www.abilitiessoft.com
--
John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer
Abilitiessoft, Inc.
http://www.abilitiessoft.com
Madison, Wisconsin USA
Developing software for people with disabilities
For a description of the software, to download it and links to
project pages go to http://www.abilitiessoft.com
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