Major development this week. As we discussed on last Friday's TC call, all of our deliberations about syntax simplification (and the feedback we received from developers last week) made us realize we needed to fully document the underlying model the syntax was representing (and not the other way around, which is what sometimes has happened in our syntax discussions).
So Markus and I have done that. It's now on the TC wiki:
PLEASE REVIEW THIS and see if you can spot any flaws in the model (after all, it only represents 9 years worth of development work ;-)
What this model helped both of us realize is the following:
- While bracketing syntaxes like < > can be attractive for readability, they actually make it harder to parse the JSON and to define clean matching rules for variables. So it places a premium on using single character symbols vs. brackets.
- With a fully documented model of the semantics required, the choices about which syntax character to use to express which semantics becomes arbitrary. Any unique symbol will work.
So we have started a second wiki page exclusively for the purpose of letting TC member experiment with their own preferred choices for syntax symbols:
YOUR ASSIGNMENT...
...is to copy the example block of XDI statements there into your favorite word processor and then start doing a search & replace of the syntax symbols to decide which ones you believe are most readable. Then, when you decide on your preference, just paste the final result back into the wiki page so others can see it.
If everyone does this sometime tomorrow (it should only take you a few minutes), then on Friday's TC call we can discuss it and drive this to a consensus.
REMEMBER: THE CHOICES ARE COMPLETELY ARBITRARY and based solely on TC members subjective judgements about readability. YOUR OPINION MATTERS.
So please do weigh in.
Thanks,
=Drummond