Subject: Re: Difficulties with the Refal System
From: Arkady Klimov (klark@bagirra.net)
Date: Thu Feb 08 2001 - 17:00:06 MSK
----- Original Message -----
From: Helmut Enck-Radana <her@paradigma-software.de>
To: <refal@botik.ru>
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 8:41 AM
Subject: RE: Difficulties with the Refal System
| > -----Original Message-----
| > From: Arkady Klimov [mailto:klark@bagirra.net]
| > Sent: Wednesday, 07 February 2001 09:48
|
| > [...]
| > | I also tried to download Refal-6, but I'm always receiving
| > | error messages.
| > Did you recieve error messages when opening page or downloading
| > or running?
|
| I could read the page
| http://www.refal.net/english/doc/ark_klimov/index.html,
| but I could not download
| http://www.refal.net/english/doc/ark_klimov/Refal6.zip.
|
| > In fact I also couldn't enter my Refal6 site from www.refal.net,
| > so I suggest to try
| > http://www.keldysh.ru/dpt_16/Refal6/index.htm
|
| Yes, this one worked. But I'm afraid I will not be able to make an efficient
| use of the system only with the documentation which is included in the
| distribution.
|
| I was surprised to see that the Refal-6 executables are older than that of
| Refal-5. Isn't Refal developed further anymore?
In fact Refal-6 has not been developed for 3 or 4 years. About 2 years ago
the current executables were built. Since then only a couple of errors have
been fixed in script (=refal) parts of the system. (In 2000 I had a very active user).
To-day I decided to update the distribution on the web.
However I failed to use its old address,
so the new address is http://gh218.keldysh.ru/refal6/
(Leonid, will you please update the reference from refal.net).
Please, try it and tell me if any problems arise.
The distribitive file refal6.zip contains a brief info on the language
and on the usage of system, written in English.
But the full language documentation exists only in Russian,
purhaps it is a difficulty for you... . Thus it might be better for you to use Refal-5
instead, since there exist a book on Refal-5 in English written by V.Turchin.
Generally speaking, Refal-6 is an extension of Refal-5, though libraries of
built-in functions differ. The Refal-6 distribution contains a module which emulates
complete refal-5 environment (except some of new extensions).
Thus you can start from Refal-5 and in any moment switch to Refal6, if you find
it worthy.
|
| > [...]
| > Alexandr have experimented with Refal-written XML-parser in Refal5.
| > It is not that slow as one might anticipate.
| > (As far as I remember that parser also allowed for attributes).
|
| Thanks for this reference.
|
| > [...]
| > By the way, may be it looks as anti-advertisement here, but I use
| > now myself the SML for processing XML.
|
| I also thought of using a language of the ML family, but unfortunatly I've
| been procrastinating to learn one of these languages for quite a long time
| now, and regarding the XML transformations I need some results quite
| quickly. When I found Refal, I was impressed by the simplicity and elegance
| of the language.
Surely, if you need just to have a good language for processing XML-data,
I think Refal is the best choice. We use SML as a programming tool for our
project, in which we need to input/output some XML data - thereby we use
SML, not Refal, for managing XML as well.
If I need to process XML in Refal I would start from writing a simple
XML-parser in Refal. Of cource I could save a couple of days if I had
it ready. I think Alexandr Korkyukov (Alexandre Korlyukov
<korlyukov@grsu.grodno.by>) will provide you with some.
The crucial question here is the representation of XML-document in the
form of Refal-expression.
-- Arkady
|
| > If you wish, I could also share with you some of our tools
| > (nonvalidating parser, unparser).
|
| Thanks for the offer, I possibly will approach you later regarding this.
|
| -- Helmut
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