[om-list] System Design

[Luke Call]

Mark Butler wrote:

> I like the idea of a human readable export format, but parsing one is
> certainly considerably harder than a more conventional format, so I suppose we
> should use a conventional format as the primary one.  I am very interested in
> computer language design and was trying to kill two birds with one stone with
> a human read/write-able format.

Do you mean the format for actually storing the data in a language, as 
opposed to decomposing objects on to a database? Could you elaborate on 
one vs. the other?

> A LISPy meta-meta-model has the advantage of having a long history in the
> knowledge representation field.  I do not really want to program in LISP or
> Scheme, but I am not aware of any better alternatives for an arbitary symbolic
> data structure.  Any other suggestions?

Again, I'm foggy. (Though I spent a lot of time w/ scheme & have a lot 
of respect for it.) (Face to face would be easier but oh well). What 
causes us to require a special format other than objects decomposed onto 
a database? Tom & Mark already see this but unfortunately I don't yet.

When we get together around Thanksgiving (assuming we can?) it would be 
cool to have a white- or blackboard, or at least a place to gesture and 
talk for a while. Place, anyone?

Luke