[SCL] Representing constraints that go beyond EBNF

[John F. Sowa]

Murray,

 > None of these people could be accused of having any deficiency
 > in their knowledge of logic.

I don't know any of the people you have named.  Until I see
evidence to the contrary, I assume that most people involved
in the W3C have a great deal to learn about logic.

 > Would you actually state that to their face? I doubt it.

Of course I would.  I have already said that in a note to the
SCL archives, which are Googled for all eternity.   If they
demonstrate that they know logic, then I'd be delighted
to work with them.

 > ... but they've accomplished something you've yet to do:
 > they've built something extremely solid and functional
 > that will become an ISO standard, fairly soon too.

Remember that I worked at IBM for 30 years, and I've done my
part in designing some rather solid and functional things.

Re ISO standards:  I've been involved with the ANSI and ISO
standards process for a dozen years, and I've seen enough
kludges come out of it that having the ISO stamp doesn't
automatically make me salute.  (And I've also seen quite
a lot of things coming out of IBM about which I would
say the same thing.)

On the other hand, I also recognize that some good things
have come out of ISO, and for that reason, I have recommended
that we go through the exercise of making SCL an ISO standard.

 > ... and that the field of markup isn't *entirely* full
 > of ignorant hacks.

I never said it was.  There are many very intelligent people
in the W3C, but most of them don't know logic -- and it shows.

In any case, I think that stating the formal definition of SCL
in SCL is the best way to go (and treating EBNF as a concrete
syntax for a subset of SCL).

John