Dan Sugalski wrote:
Sam made reference to the CLS last week, and it's a point well-taken. We need a list of standard activities that parrot provides so that people writing compilers can use the provided facilities and people implementing data types can make sure they do the right things to work with the standards.
Before I go rattling this off and starting a PDD that'll likely languish a bit, does anyone want to step up and volunteer to put together a skeleton PDD with the current facilities, at which point we can start moving forward to fill in any holes and getting things detailed enough that it can be reasonably used?
To start it'd include the vtable and MMD functions, the ops that call 'em, and the methods we look for by default.
My goal at the moment is to get up to speed to the point where I *could* write such a document. I'm actively working on Pirate, have been in concact with the authors of Pint, and also plan to look into a Parrot binding to libxml2 (which would explain my interest in utf-8).
Note: while I was in no way the author of the CLA, I was the conveener (EMCA-speak for chair) of the working group which produced it, so I am familiar with both its content and how it was produced.
With that in mind, it is my feeling that such a document is premature. Unless somebody is much further along than I am aware of, we don't know where all the pitfalls are just yet; let alone knowing which of the pitfalls we can pave over, and which we simply need to post a big bold lighthouse at.
If you can wait a few weeks, I'm willing to take a stab at it, but just not yet. If somebody else takes the lead, I will certainly contribute.
- Sam Ruby
