John Connors  <johnc@yagc.ndo.co.uk> wrote:
+---------------
| Why didn't someone think of it back in the 60's? Sigh.."XPL is not a
| particularly programmer - friendly language."...
+---------------

Someone did. Well, late 60's, leading to the publication of the book
"A Compiler Generator" by William M. McKeeman, James J. Horning,
and David B. Wortman, ISBN 13-155077-2 (Prentice-Hall 1970):

    http://www.cs.toronto.edu/XPL/
    The XPL Programming Language
    The XPL programming language is a derivative of PL/I designed
    for compiler writing. XPL was first announced at the 1968 FJCC
    in San Francisco, CA. ... XPL is the name of both the programming
    language and the compiler generator system (or TWS: translator
    writing system) based on the language. ... A number of languages
    are based on XPL, including the PL/M family and Hal/S [developed
    for NASA for the Space Shuttle].

I really love those cute little T-diagrams that fill the insides of
the front & back covers of the hardback, showing all the platforms
that XPL has been ported to. [A T-diagram is a simple description of
a translator or compiler which shows the input language, the output
language, and the language or platform the translator itself runs on.]

Several open-source versions of optimizing XPL compilers are
currently available, see:

    http://www.cs.toronto.edu/XPL/
    http://www.idiom.com/free-compilers/TOOL/XPL-1.html
    http://www.users.bigpond.com/robin_v/xpl.htm

+---------------
|  XPS - eXtensible Programming System
| By eXtensible Systems, Inc.
...
| XPS combines an XML-based programming language, XPL, ...
+---------------

*BZZZT!*  Sorry, game over. The name XPL is already taken, poseurs.


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
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