TXL: a language for text structural transformation, analysis and verification (opens in new tab)

(txl.ca)

48 pointskxepal11y ago12 comments

12 comments

Appearance matters.

The font makes the page very hard to read and lends an impression of silliness to what is obviously a very serious project.

jdnier11y ago

It looks reasonable in Chrome on Linux... until I looked at the source, which is littered with <FONT FACE="Comic Sans MS"> tags.

devhead11y ago

+1 that was the first thing i saw. came here to see if it was a joke. http://www.comicsanscriminal.com

yarrel11y ago

Looks interesting but it's non-free software.

enqk11y ago

There is a free software analogue in development called COLM.

http://www.colm.net/open-source/colm/

evacchi11y ago

With respect to Program Transformation, I'd point out Stratego/Spoofax [1] and Kiama [2]

  [1] http://strategoxt.org/Spoofax  
  [2] https://code.google.com/p/kiama/

DannyBee11y ago

TXL has been around for 20+ years now, it's interesting but just never going to be used in production :)

thisrod11y ago

It seems to be meant for research and development, not as the asteroid from the lex manpage. It would make sense as a teaching language for compilers, too. The people who need to know how Lex and Yacc work could read the Dragon Book later.

I wonder if Alan Kay and the Viewpoints mob knew about this, and if so, why they bothered with O-Meta?

cdhdc11y ago

It has been used successfully in production. According to this webpage http://www.infoq.com/articles/dsl-interaction-txl it was used for Y2K analysis and conversions of over 3.5 billion lines at IBM Global Services.

Edit: Better reference paper: http://ftp.qucis.queensu.ca/home/cordy/Papers/TXLSE_IST.pdf

cdhdc11y ago

Automagical is an Objective-C to C# source code transformation system that uses TXL under the hood.

http://razum.si/automagical/

northisup11y ago

Ad hominem comment about comic-sans.

0xdeadbeefbabe11y ago

The people who need this (like I did a few years ago) if they notice it at all are still willing to suffer through plenty.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

12 comments

breckinloggins11y ago

Appearance matters.

The font makes the page very hard to read and lends an impression of silliness to what is obviously a very serious project.

jdnier11y ago

It looks reasonable in Chrome on Linux... until I looked at the source, which is littered with <FONT FACE="Comic Sans MS"> tags.

devhead11y ago

+1 that was the first thing i saw. came here to see if it was a joke. http://www.comicsanscriminal.com

yarrel11y ago

Looks interesting but it's non-free software.

enqk11y ago

There is a free software analogue in development called COLM.

http://www.colm.net/open-source/colm/

evacchi11y ago

With respect to Program Transformation, I'd point out Stratego/Spoofax [1] and Kiama [2]

  [1] http://strategoxt.org/Spoofax  
  [2] https://code.google.com/p/kiama/

DannyBee11y ago

TXL has been around for 20+ years now, it's interesting but just never going to be used in production :)

thisrod11y ago

I wonder if Alan Kay and the Viewpoints mob knew about this, and if so, why they bothered with O-Meta?

cdhdc11y ago

Edit: Better reference paper: http://ftp.qucis.queensu.ca/home/cordy/Papers/TXLSE_IST.pdf

cdhdc11y ago

Automagical is an Objective-C to C# source code transformation system that uses TXL under the hood.

http://razum.si/automagical/

northisup11y ago

Ad hominem comment about comic-sans.

0xdeadbeefbabe11y ago

The people who need this (like I did a few years ago) if they notice it at all are still willing to suffer through plenty.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse