[pd-discuss] Using an intermediate language for pdcalc proposal

Thu Mar 17 07:36:49 UTC 2011

Hi platonides,

I agree with you that my intermediate data format is not the most estetically pleasing of it's kind. However it is also exactly that: data. Getting Dijkstra on me is a bit of an overkill. As Dijkstra discussed algorithms, not data models. When my calculator parses this format it transforms it into a nice object oriented acyclic directed graph. I do completely agree with the evaluate property however. I think there are better solutions for that, which I didn't consider at the time.

Could you sketch or proof of concept a tertiary approach?

Cheers,

Maarten Zeinstra

Kennisland | Knowledgeland 
T: +31.20.575.6720 | M: +31.6.43.053.919
www.kennisland.nl | www.knowledgeland.org

Op Mar 17, 2011 om 2:24 heeft Platonides <platonides at gmail.com> het volgende geschreven:

> Primavera De Filippi wrote:
>> Hi Platonides,
>> how is the whole thing going ? are you still interested in translating
>> the pdcalculators into an intermediary language?
>> did you get any information from Maarten? do you need any help or anything?
>> I think it would be nice to try and implement at least one of the
>> pdcalculators, as an experiment, to see how it works and whether it
>> could be useful.
>> Please keep me updated about all this !
>> Thanks, 
>> Primavera
> 
> Hi Primavera,
> (and other list readers, too)
> 
> I originally thought that the intermediary language would just encode a
> fixed algorithm. However, I later talked with Maarten and he mentioned
> rule based systems. We both agree that they are ugly to work with (lots
> of and conditions). But I think that the syntax should be mapeable to a
> ruleset. That would allow to work with uncertainity for
> publicdomaincalculators usage. Or solve from a different path when
> missing some information.
> Even with a naive algorithm, that makes it more complex.
> 
> I have also looked at http://wiki.okfn.org/PublicDomainCalculators/xml
> format but those goto and <evaluate> are evil.
> 
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