[sc34wg3] Multi-line comments in CTM

[Patrick Durusau]

Steve,

Thanks for the enumeration of the use cases and reporting your 
experience with multi-line comments in LTM!

I was thinking that prospectively that with the new template mechanism 
that a multi-line comment feature would be very helpful there as well.

Hope you are at the start of a great week!

Patrick

Steve Pepper wrote:
> * Patrick
> |
> | So, I guess my question is whether or not a multi-line comment mechanism
> | is thought to be necessary for commenting out blocks of material in a
> | CTM instance?
>
> I have created literally dozens and dozens of topic maps in LTM over the last 8
> years, and I have had a use for multi-line comments in practically every one.
> Typical use cases for me are:
>
> * lengthy, "permanent" comments, such as the header information and
>   "todo" lists (see opera.ltm, distributed with the Omnigator, for
>   examples)
>
> * temporarily commenting out large chunks of LTM code (e.g. all
>   associations of a certain type) for testing purposes
>
> * temporarily commenting out large chunks of non-LTM data (e.g.
>   source data pasted in from a CSV file and intended to be converted
>   to LTM using search/replace at a later date).
>
> Depending on which editor one has available, it can be MUCH more inconvenient to
> prefix every line with a (single line) comment character than to wrap a large
> number of lines with (multi-line) start and end delimiters.
>
> Multi-line comments are therefore an absolute must for me.
>
> Should it be possible to nest them? Once in a while I've wished this was
> possible with LTM, but it isn't and I've survived without it. I've also survived
> without the ability to escape closing delimiters in quotes. In short: the
> simplest possible multi-line comment capability would meet my requirements, but
> I agree with Lars Marius that nested comments would be the better solution (even
> though they screw up the syntax colouring in my editor ;-)
>
> * Murray
> |
> | Please, stick with the known when possible. Avoid the strange.
>
> I agree with this and would have liked to see C/Java/CSS style comments.
> Unfortunately, though, the slash is an important path operator syntax in TMQL.
> If TMQL and CTM are to have the same comment syntax (which I think they should),
> this is a showstopper for // (single line) and /* ... */ (multi-line).
>
> One of the few symbols that TMQL hasn't used is the bang, which is why the Kyoto
> meeting agreed on !! (single line) and !* ... *! (multi-line).
>
> * Robert
> |
> | This discussion is so very 1980. :-)
>
> This kind of comment is so very unnecessary :-(
>
> Steve
>  
> --
> Conference Chair, Topic Maps 2008
> Oslo, April 2-4 2008
> www.topicmaps.com
>
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>
>
>   

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick at durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)