Meeting minutes
Review of open actions
2023-01-10-f: NTW to produce draft documentation of the XML vocabulary, issue #137
invisibleXML/
2024-03-05-c: SP to prepare pull request to resolve issue #139 (new grammars, new README) - CONTINUE
2024-10-01-f: SP to make a PR for both versions of the RFC grammar
invisibleXML/
2024-10-01-e: SP to review ixml tests and correct the grammar - CONTINUE
2024-11-26-01: Steven to review the Balisage paper about pragmas - DONE
2024-11-26-02: Steven to add the new papers as bibliography material. - DONE
2024-11-26-03: Norm to make sure there's a section on the website for a
bibliography of related papers and papers that report using iXML. - DONE
Status reports
A new C implementation - see libxmq/
Nico has an R grammar pull request
AGreed - it can be merged
New open issues
#286: Resolve ambiguity in JSON test grammar? - Norm - do we want to fix this?
#283: Version numbering conventions - Bethan's ideas... How do we assign version numbers for what type of changes?
Norm - community consensus suggests moving to 2 if we break something.
Leave in abeyance at the present
Use pragmas for the prolog?
Norm - I propose adopting the Balisage proposal
Steven - I wouldn't go that far.... especially the end of the paper
Steven - use the contents of the pragma to distinguish what the pragma applies to....
Bethan - should we revisit the purpose of pragmas?
Steven - vehemently opposed to using pragmas to alter the semantics
i.e. removing them would not change the meaning of the output
Bethan - pragmas are a broad sort of thing, but are we looking at just hints for improving performance or choosing between ambiguous alternatives?
Norm: a simple example. A rule S: some stuff. In this case we could add a pragma for a regular expression to run faster. Is that a justifiable pragma?
Nico: but what if the regular expression is wrong? Or a pragma syntax which converts into regular expressions?
Much discussion about the issues of multiple incoherent definition.
Norm - there is an analogy between pragmas and processing instructions in XML
Bethan - there are too many different views about the scope and purpose of pragmas.... needs some examples to start thinking about.
Norm - we could try an email conversation
Steven - conclude this discussion for now
A subtraction operator
Not discussed
<john> Next Meeting: 7th January 2025