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Peter - I was bewildered at the notion of needing yet another scripting language, let alone one as "library domain-specific" (that wording alone throws up red flags everywhere), but I'm not here to bash ideas. Instead I looked up your site and read the small blurb about "Nova". It seems that the main objective behind your pursuit is creating a language that provides a specific data type for semantic objects (or relationships). I have to ask, what about semantic maps makes you believe that they require a specific data type rather than just being an object type? Are other scripting languages too slow to suit certain needs such that a new data type is necessitated? I really can't see this being the case. That being said, while it can be an invaluable experience to learn about making scripting languages, if there's to be any community movement toward a particular language (php, ruby, java, scheme or what have you) there has to be some very real and significant benefit. Or more directly, you seem to have specific ideas about a library domain-specific language. What do today's languages not have that you believe is so essential that you'd be willing to write a new scripting language? - Patrick E. On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 10:51 AM, Peter Schlumpf <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Bill, you hit a nail pretty squarely on the head. I believe this decades long fetish with MARC has to go. It was designed to efficiently store data on magtapes and doesn't make any sense in today's world. It's a huge millstone around the neck of Libraryland and it keeps them stuck in that tiny little ghetto. Anything can be a mind-prison, even PHP, Python or Django. They are all arbitrary anyway. > > And you are correct in pointing out that the natural response of librarians to a problem is to seek consensus in a self-absorbed way. Form committees and all that nonsense which never goes anywhere. They are happy enough going around in circles, like the Nowhere Man making all his nowhere plans for nobody. > > My hope is that some among us would just undertake these problems ourselves. Outside of the realm of the libraries and the limiting mindsets many of us work in. We've all got ideas. Fire up vi and get busy and make something happen, like a library domain-specific language. Start fresh. There is nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is how the library community goes about such things. > > Let's go somewhere. > > Peter Schlumpf > www.avantilibrarysystems.com -- Patrick K. Etienne Systems Analyst Georgia Institute of Technology Library & Information Center (404) 385-8121