Re: [xml-dev] [ANN] Candle 0.9.1 Beta Release - a new scripting language

[henryluo@candlescript.org]

Hi Bill

Thanks for sharing your document and thoughts on the unification of XML technologies.

I've browse through your document during the week end. And I think we have many ideas in common. However, I felt your document is a bit high-level, and it will be great if there's more detailed specification of your language.

In response to your post, I've just written a blog article on Candle's approach towards the "grand unification":

http://candleapp.blogspot.com/2011/08/towards-grand-unification.html

One thing I'd like to highlight is that I think you might have a wrong impression of the procedural features in Candle. Candle does support procedural features in order to be a general-purpose programming language. But they are  much higher-level than those in the conventional procedural languages. Candle is designed to be as functional as possible and it deliberately restricts the usage of assignment operation. Data construction, evaluation, pattern matching, query and transformation all uses high level functional features and never need assignment. And node update uses CRUD statements rather than assignment operation. And there's the separation-of-side-effects mechanism to preserve the pure functional features. The only case in Candle that needs assignment is in while-loop (Candle differentiates variable initialization and re-assignment).

I'll write more blog articles on the details of the design rationales, considerations and trade-offs made while creating Candle. And I'll be glad to hear feedback from you and the xml-dev list.

Regards

Henry

> 
> Attached is a draft of another approach to a Grand
Unification and
> consequent simplification.
> .
>
It emphasizes declarative code (e.g. HTML and State Machines) with
> powerful
>  expressions (e.g. SQL) rather than interpretive
procedural code.  Of
> course  both are signficant.
> 
> 
> 
> In a message dated 7/31/2011 11:10:37 P.M.
Eastern Daylight Time,
> henryluo@candlescript.org writes:
> 
> Dear members of xml-dev list,
> 
> I'm
glad  to announce the 0.9.1 beta release of Candle (Common 
>
ApplicatioN
> Development LanguagE). Candle  is an open-source
(MPL) scripting language
> that unifies the core features of  many
XML-related technologies
> (including
> XSLT, XQuery,
XQuery Update, RELAX  NG, BNF, XHTML, SVG and more). It can
>
be
> used to develop command-line, desktop  and Internet
applications.
> 
> Some of the advantages of Candle
comparing  to XSLT and XQuery are:
>     *   Candle is an unified 
language instead of two highly-overlapping
> languages. Candle
uses  scripting syntax instead of the highly verbose
> markup
> syntax of XSLT.
>     *   _Candle's  markup_
>
(http://www.candlescript.org/doc/candle-markup-reference.htm)  language
is
> strongly-typed even without schema, whereas XML
> is
only weakly-typed without schema.
>     *   Candle consists of a
_pattern  language_
>
(http://www.candlescript.org/doc/candle-pattern-reference.htm)  which
> cleanly unifies several
> pattern-related DSLs  (including
RegEx, BNF, RELAX NG, XQuery Sequence
> Type). It can
>
easily match  on sequence of items, nodes and characters.
>     * 
 Candle unifies functional and procedural  programming. Through a
> mechanism I called separation-of-side-effects, Candle unifies  two
worlds
> in a
> more orderly manner then any existing
multi-paradigm  programming
> languages. In Candle, routines are
divided into functions and  methods.
> Functions are
>
routines without side-effects and methods are  routines with
side-effects.
> The rule of separation-of-side-effects is that
methods  can call
> functions,
> but not vice versa. And
expressions in Candle are always  functional. In
> this way, pure
functional islands are well-preserved in  the vast sea of
>
procedural code.
>     *   Candle is a general-purpose  scripting
language like Python,
> whereas XSLT and XQuery are just DSLs. 
Candle alone is sufficient to
> develop
> complex
command-line, desktop and  Internet applications, whereas XSLT and
> XQuery still need to integrate with  other languages to develop a
serious
> application.
> For more information, you can
visit  the _website_
> (http://www.candlescript.org/) 
(http://www.candlescript.org/)  or the
> _SourceForge  project_
> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/candleapp/) .
> 
>
You can also read two blog articles _Why  I Invented Candle (I)_
>
(http://candleapp.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-i-invented-candle-i.html) 
and
> _Why  I
> Invented Candle (II)_
>
(http://candleapp.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-i-invented-candle-ii.html) 
to
> understand the design rationales behind  Candle.
>
> Your feedback on Candle is highly appreciated. I'm here 
anxiously
> waiting.
> 
> Henry
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> Candle  App Platform - An unified platform for desktop and Internet
 apps.
> 
>
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