I've just asked my first Qi programming question on StackOverflow. I
don't see why such kind of questions should be answered on any mailing
list when there's much better services out there for Q&A purposes.
Although my question is more Qi-YACC-related than Qi-related, it's
still the first question tagged "Qi" on the site.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1381124/implementing-a-xml-compile...

That said, although it's the first question tagged "Qi", it's not the
first time Qi is mentioned on StackOverflow.

Non-disclosure: I'm only related to StackOverflow as being a very
impressed user of the site.

Thanks Stefan for your answer on StackOverflow ("SO" thereafter).

Thinking of it, I'm not sure it was very nice of me to ask a question
there and, in some way, require that if you answer it, you do it
there. Sorry for that; I didn't explain why I think it's better for
Qi's/Shen's future, nor did I mention I didn't mind if you prefer to
answer here on the mailing list.

Now, the rationale on why it's better to ask Q&A questions on SO than
on mailing lists is that in the future, when people will search
answers to their own questions, they'll end up reading old, uncleaned
mailing lists, not knowing if what they read still applies to their
present need. For example, the guy who wrote that it's a bad idea to
parse XML using its BNF said so in 1999. Now we're ten years later and
maybe someone proved this opinion is wrong in the meantime; but that
list's post can't be updated by anyone to account for this. So people
searching for stuff and finding answers on mailing list archives are
often misguided. That's the reason why SO came to life. Its founders
thought there should be a better way - something that's more useful
future-wise. Therefore on SO it's possible to update both questions
and answers to make them better: more clear, more precise, more
accurate, etc. And through the voting and moderation systems, the
community has some power to highlight what seems better and to bury
what seems wasteful.

That said, it's true that from the first moment I heard about SO
(before it came alive), I loved its founders' vision and really
embarked into the idea. Maybe a bit too much, sorry; feel free to
"reject" SO as much as you want in the future if you like!

On Sep 4, 3:34 pm, Daniel Jomphe <danieljom...@gmail.com> wrote:

StackOverflow> uhg, another site to logon to.

my only experience was
Inform -> HTML (I chose CL
before I knew of Qi)

With no yacc (lexer) experience, I had a vague idea *
I was going to be writing a Recursive Decent Parser.

SO> using a CFG is a bad idea...

...that was parsing XML in C?

BUT you said the XML spec has an EBNF...

AND you are using (Qi-)YACC

It will be interesting, because you are
going from XML (Sexp) to Sexp.
not Sexp to non-Sexp.

Stefan> Keep state in a Global...

I had Keywords, and Objects (standard and defined)
in a closure, with key-or-obj-p add-obj functions.

Later I looked up the exact type of RDP,
which I forget, the one with peek ahead.

* - previously I would say - I have never
written a parser, interpreter, compiler, etc...

I was interested in Qi as
a Pattern matcher / Prolog.

On Sep 4, 3:34 pm, Daniel Jomphe <danieljom...@gmail.com> wrote:

Looks like there's really no reason why my idea would be bad. Plus I
get to learn and to answer one of my needs.

You raise one fact: I definitely took that mailing list's post out of
context re: my own purposes. Funny how I didn't *at all* remark the
error of my ways yesterday. :) You're right, it should be mostly a no-
brainer, unless the spec's way of writing the EBNF makes it appear
less complex than it really is.

Thanks for the answer.