Re: DOCBOOK: Offtopic: EBNF equivelant for describing bitstreams

[BigSmoke <bigsmoke@home.nl>]

Hi,

This is much more than I had hoped for. You're advice has helped me and
saved my many, many additional hours of work. Thanks!

On Friday 13 December 2002 12:15, Peter Ring wrote:
> EBNF should suffice to what you describe here, but yes, there are other
> relevant standards.

Hmm, you're the third person who told me that. I'm starting to
actually believe it :)

> BTW, did you know there's an ISO standard for EBNF?
>
>   http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-ebnf.html

Yes.

> ASN.1, Abstract Syntax Notation number One, is a standard that defines a
> formalism for the specification of abstract data types.
>
> It is used e.g. for specification of telecom protocols (and you don't get
> more bit-oriented than that). There's a lot of tools for editing ASN.1
> specifications and compiling them to executable programs etc.
>
> Google for ASN.1 or start here:
>
>   http://asn1.elibel.tm.fr/en/index.htm

This seems to be just what I've been looking for. Not only does it have a cozy
simularity to EBNF, it seems to be just as easy to learn. I'm learning it this
very minute.

Now I just have to test if I can cheat by using DocBook's EBNF elements to
describe ASN syntax (evil grin).

> The STEP standards (ISO 10303) specify a set of protocols to exchange
> product model data for international trade and cooperation in major
> industries including automotive, electronics, aerospace, plant engineering
> and civil engineering. The STEP standards are defined using a modelling
> language called EXPRESS (ISO 10303-11).
>
> EXPRESS is an extremely nice language for describing structures and
> constraints in general. If you have money to spend, you can buy the
> standard from ISO:
>
>
> http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=1834
>8
>
>
> If you are just curious, working drafts are available here:
>
>   http://www.mel.nist.gov/step/parts/part011e2/
>
> and there's a bit of overview of EXPRESS in relation to XML on this Cover
> page:
>
>   http://xml.coverpages.org/stepExpressXML.html

Thanks heaps for the sound advice!

 - Rowan van der Molen

-- 
Furiosity feverishly fears.