[developers] spanish grammar/TDL documentation strings

[Emily M. Bender]

Sounds good to me, especially if the doc strings are allowed
to span multiple comment lines, so long as they are continguous.

For clarification, would it be:

type-name := supertype1 & supertype2 & supertype 3 &
; documentation string
; more of the documentation string
[ constraints ].

or

type-name :=
; documentation string
; more of the documentation string
supertype1 & supertype2 & supertype 3 &
[ constraints ].

And separately, I'm sure that allowing comments mid-type-definition
will be very much appreciated.  For one thing, it will make it
easier to debug by tinkering with particular constraints on 
types with large definitions...

Emily

On Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 11:24:08PM +0000, Ann Copestake wrote:
> 
> several months ago, there was a discussion about comments that developers was 
> apparently CCd in the middle of.  I meant to comment at the time:
> 
> a) the LKB-CLIM GUI does have a Help option on menus associated with types, 
> which works with the Emily-syntax
> 
> b) if it's generally agree that that syntax isn't good but that we do need a 
> documentation facility, I propose that we officially allow comment lines 
> beginning with ; inside the definitions of types, lexical entries etc, and 
> that supported readers may (optionally) treat the first line(s) of such 
> comments as special with respect to documentation.  This would be option ii) 
> in the long msg that Emily quoted back in September,
> 
> Ann
> 
> ebender at u.washington.edu said:
> > either way, i guess there will be no immediate resolution, hence it is
> > good that emily has already taken such comments out of the Matrix.  if
> > there was an original proposal to `developers', and assuming emily was
> > part of it, in my experience she commands a perfect memory (no wonder,
> > at her youthful age :-) and can no doubt retrieve the original email?
> > and if not emily, i am sure ann was involved?  emily, why did you add
> > this syntax to the Matrix in the first place?
> > If you put it that way, I have no choice but to go digging, do I?
> > Below is an email from Ann, dated 2004-06-21, exploring the options for the
> > documentation strings.  The original motivaiton, as I remember it, was to
> > provide facilities for grammar writers to associate documentation with
> > particular types/instances such that it could be displayed in the GUI in
> > various ways.  The examples in the Matrix were the result of a fit of
> > conscience on my part about lack of documentation, presumably.  I still think
> > this is in general a good idea, but since a) there is not yet any facility in
> > the GUI for vieweing these (right?) and b) hardly any grammars use them, I'm
> > not terribly bothered about taking out my few doc strings.
> 
> > more high-level: ideally we would establish a procedure for discussing 
> > extensions or changes that affect multiple components; the `developers'
> > list should play a central role in such routines, i would think.
> 
> > This sounds reasonable to me.  `developers' cc-ed.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>