--On 17 July 2001 19:27 +0900 Murata Makoto <> wrote:
> The BNF in 7.1 is very difficult to understand.
It depends what you mean by "understand". I think all our target audience
can understand grammars without difficulty. And I think all our target
audience can easily use the spec to determine whether a particular schema
is correct according to the BNF. It's also clear and unambiguous.
However, on a more intuitive level I agree it is difficult understand. What
is the grammar really doing? Why is it written the way it is?
I don't think the solution is to make the grammar informative. That is
completely backwards. The grammar is the precise, rigourous, unambiguous
expression of what is allowed. That is exactly what is needed for the
normative part. To assist in understanding, I think we should add
additional informative text. Specifically, I would propose adding at the
beginning of 7.1 a bulleted list of 7 or so paragraphs, each of which
describes one of the restrictions that the grammar enforces; each of these
paragraphs can refer to the productions of the grammar that enforces the
restriction.
James
