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Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 11:13:02 -0500
To: "Ant Developers List" <dev@ant.apache.org>
From: Ken Gentle <j.kenneth.gentle@acm.org>
Subject: RE: [VOTE] macrodef - do attributes as properties or
  substitution s
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Everyone is entitled to your opinion, and everyone else is entitled to 
their own, wrong opinion.  Right, Dominique? ;^)

Just to be contrarian (but not really), the "{@x}" notation looks weird to 
me!  "@{x}" is familiar enough, although I can't say why at the moment -- 
oh, yeah, doesn't Perl have a similar construct?

I've watched this discussion all the way through, and I can see the 
benefits of both approaches. FWIW, seems to me that a run-time definition 
of a property within the macro (<local> rears its ugly(?!) head again) is 
desirable.  Although a straight textual substitution will be easily 
understood by folks familiar with the C/C++ pre-processor.

I feel strongly both ways! :^/

         Ken

At 10:11 2003-11-19, you wrote:
> > From: Jose Alberto Fernandez [mailto:jalberto@cellectivity.com]
> > > From: Gus Heck [mailto:gus-antdev@cognition.olin.edu]
> > > My (non-committer) oppion coincides with Stefan here,  with a slight
> > > preference for @{x}
> > > because it looks like "put the substitution AT this location" when I
> > > read it to myself.
> > >
> >
> > Actually if we go for reading value, the advantage of @{x} notation is
> > that sounds like "AT(tribute) x" :-)
> >
> > I think I can live with that.
>
>Unlike Jose Alberto, I think it's a 'good' thing than referencing an
>declared attribute of a <macrodef> in its body/impl resembles the XSLT
>referencing of a attribute of the current XML element!
>
>The similarities are striking, and the syntax is well known and clearly
>documented. The <macrodef> attribute *will* be an XML element attribute
>when it's used actually!!!
>
>{@x} feels very natural, and avoids any confusion with ${x}.
>It can be easily escaped using the double symbol people like,
>so that {@@x} passes thru as the {@x} literal. (After all, I don't
>think it's valid to have an XML attribute starting with an @, so
>it's free of conflict too.)
>
>The point is not to resemble the existing notation for dereferencing Ant
>properties, since that's what it's supposed to be distinct from, which is
>why @{x} feels wrong to me (and looks ugly IMHO ;-).
>
>The point is to use a widely used notation for a widely similar purpose,
>i.e. the XSLT notation, which as I noted above is so similar to the semantic
>of what's being done.
>
>I'm not a committer and all, but to me {@x} is the clear choice for
><macrodef> attribute dereferencing. I'm sure others will disagree ;-)
>But no one can escape getting my opinion on the matter ;-)))) --DD
>
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=============================================================
J. Kenneth Gentle (Ken)    | Phone: (610) 255-0361
Gentle Software, LLC       | Email: j.kenneth.gentle@acm.org
=============================================================


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