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Subject: Re: [office] ISO 14977 EBNF grammar



Thanks for looking into this, David.

Although we are not a W3C standard, ODF certain has a "family resemblance" to them, based on our use of so many other W3C standards, such as XML, XLink, MathML, XForms, etc.  So defining our syntax using their conventions is a reasonable thing.  

On other hand, in other cases we have not used W3C standards and instead used standards from ISO.  For example, our use of RELAX NG rather than XML Schema.

Either choice is defensible, I believe, and can lead to a clear, unambiguous syntactic definition.  

I wonder if there is any emerging agreement within OASIS on which to use?  Certainly we can't be the only ones running into this.

-Rob
___________________________

Rob Weir
Software Architect
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Software Group

email: robert_weir@us.ibm.com
phone: 1-978-399-7122
blog:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/

"David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com> wrote on 04/28/2008 12:06:46 PM:

> Patrick Durusau:
> > The ISO EBNF grammar:
> >
http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/
> s026153_ISO_IEC_14977_1996(E).zip
>
> Currently, in OpenFormula we use W3C's XML spec for BNFs instead of
> the ISO EBNF
> or IETF BNF.
>
> The ISO spec is not a _bad_ one, but it does have weaknesses for the
> formula purposes.
>
> When comparing ISO's with the W3C XML spec:
> * The ISO spec has no support for character ranges and negated ranges
>   (part of regular expressions), while XML's does.
>   We use this capability; for some (like SheetName) it's not clear
> how hard that
>   change will be.
> * The ISO spec requires the use of "," for concatenation, instead of that
>    being the default.  It also requires ";" to terminate every production.
>    As a result, ISO's format is much wordier to express the same thing. E.G.:
>    ...  SheetLocator "." Column Row (':' SheetLocator "." Column Row )? ..
>   would become:
>    ...  SheetLocator, ".", Column, Row, (':', SheetLocator, ".",
> Column, Row )? .. ;
>    Not a show-stopper, but I think that's unfortunate.  
> Concatenation is EXTREMELY
>    common in BNF, so failing to have it as a default operator
> complicates the spec.
> * The ISO spec's definition operator is "=", which is easily
> confused with the "="
>    used inside BNFs themselves.  That's not as big a deal.
>
> Historically, the ISO document was expensive, while the XML specification was
> freely available.  I think it would have been unconscionable to have
> referred to the
> ISO spec while it was expensive, but now that the ISO document is
> publicly available
> without fee, I think it _could_ be used.  However, its lack of
> regular expression
> support, and unnecessary wordiness, do not give any incentives.
>
> It would take a little time to change to the ISO BNF.  To change
> this in OpenFormula,
> all the productions would have to change, e.g., change "::=" to "=",inserting
> commas everywhere, and trying to figure out how to replace the
> character ranges.
>
> Another BNF format is IETF RFC 4234.  It's kind of ugly;
> alternatives use "/" instead
> of the more common "|", and you HAVE to group them (which is a
> pain).  Even weirder,
> to indicate repetition you PRECEDE the item with "*" instead of follow it.
> Every book I've seen has "*" FOLLOW the item to be repeated.
> In my mind, IETF's is the worst of the three in terms of clarity.
>
> After looking at the W3C (XML), ISO, and IETF formats for BNFs, we chose the
> W3C's XML format. Reasons:
> * W3C's format produces the clearest, simplest specs with the same meaning.
>   Concatenation is the default, alternatives are "|", the "*" is
> AFTER the repeated item.
>   The resulting spec, with the same meaning, is simpler than with ISO or IETF.
> * W3C's format includes character range support.  ISO's does not.
> * OpenDocument is itself based on XML, so it made sense to use the same format
>    used to spec XML.
> * XML's format is publicly available at no charge. At the time I
> believe that was
>    not true of ISO's format.  It appears this point, at least, is
> moot (hooray!).
>
> XML is a standard, in every reasonable sense of the word, so using
> its BNF format
> is (in my opinion) very defensible.
>
> --- David A. Wheeler
>
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