[antlr-interest] (unknown)
atripp54321
atripp at comcast.net
Wed Mar 17 19:31:15 PST 2004
Neat tool!
This may sound crazy, but I've always thought
that a great addition to ANTLR would be a tool
that lets me draw a syntax diagram graphically,
and then generates the .g file from the graph.
I think what makes ANTLR (and similar tools) hard
for newbies is that you've got the ANTLR language/syntax
all mixed in with the target language syntax. A graphical
tool could potentially hide all ANTLR syntax from
the ANTLR user.
Just look at some simple .g code from a newbie's eyes:
constructorBody
: lc:LCURLY^ {#lc.setType(SLIST);}
( options { greedy=true; } :
explicitConstructorInvocation)?
(statement)*
RCURLY!
;
Here, we have to know what all the symbols mean: ":", ";",
"^", "#", "(" and ")", "{" and "}" "?", "!",
and how to put them all together. Wouldn't it be possible
to just draw a syntax diagram with special notation
(colors or shapes rather than symbols) to indicate the
functions of the "^", "!", "{...}" symbols?
After all, BNF-like languages aren't much better than XML,
and we all know humans should not be editing XML by hand :)
Just a thought.
Andy
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