[antlr-interest] what's in a name?

[Graham Wideman]

Hi Ter,

I'm glad you're bringing up the book title issue -- I had wanted to mention it but figured that it was already locked down. Apparently not.

First, I concur that the existing title does not do the book justice, it's not about the Design Patterns in Languages themselves.

Now what to do.

-- The book is not very much limited to DSLs per se either, (see the examples given in "Dissecting a few applications" p10, none are DSLs) so that doesn't belong in the title. The material could certainly be used for processing DSLs, so that could go in the subtitle, (but should be spelled out, because it's not that common or unique of an acronym.)

-- If there's a stong preference for a three word title, then part of the problem is that you're using up two of them with "Design Patterns", in an effort to piggyback on GoF. (GoF were following Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language -- there the pattern business only gets one word!).

Perhaps just "Patterns" is sufficient to make the connection to GoF and followers.

What the book is almost entirely about is how to build Language Processors.

So how about:

"Language Processor Patterns"  or "Patterns in Language Processing" (3.5 words :-)

But if the Patterns business can be placed in the subtitle:

"Building Language Processors
Design patterns for building software that processes languages"

Or even

"Building Language Processors
Design patterns for building software that processes languages large and small"

Or, including (but not limiting to) the DSL aspect:

"Building Language Processors
Design patterns for building software that processes general and domain-specific languages"

Ie: I think an important hook word is "building" -- it conveys that this book is going to empower the reader to actually get something done.

-- Graham