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Message: <blockquote data-quote="reanjr" data-source="post: 2150407" data-attributes="member: 20740">It's an alternative to the ontology that I support using instead of RDF-OWL.  It's much simpler to use RPGML to do the stuff that we'd use RDF-OWL for.  The benefit of RDF-OWL (I feel obligated to point out), is that it is a major standard with library support and documentation all over the internet.RDF-OWL is fairly straight-forward for those familiar with XML and the way XML works.  RPG ML is designed to be simple for your average, computer-savvy role-player who, years ago, fiddled with a programming and/or scripting language.  In my opinion, RPG ML will lead to a much larger development community than RPG ML.  I think RDF-OWL will be intimidating, and keep non-programmers away.I also point out on the Wiki that it is fairly straightforward to use RPG ML to create a normal scripting language that is translated into RPG ML.  That way, Java programmers can have a version of RPG ML that looks very much like Java, rather than using XML to code.[edit] I also point on the Wiki that is fariyl... man I rarely have that many typos/word ommissions in such a small space...I was going to use XPath, but I decided against it for the reason stated above.  A person just picking up on RPG ML can easily understand child/parent realtionships and remember how to use the, but once you get into ancestors, siblings and the more esoteric selectors available in XPath, it can become confusing for someone who doesn't sit down and decide to learn XPath on its own.  I have to look up stuff all the time for XPath even though I do understand it.  That's not the type of environment I want people to be working in.Though only initial thoughts, my idea for the engine architecture is to load the main RPG ML file(s) into memory and create a set of (for instance) a collection of functions that contained the text of the RPG ML.  I thought of actually compiling the functions on the fly, but RPG ML actually contains language features that a standard programming language can't really handle very well.  But by keeping the lists, pointers, variables, etc. stored in the engine and just keeping the RPG ML for function references that can be parsed when called, I hope to gain the best of both worlds (the app doesn't need to parse through a gigantic XML tree to find the function "roll", but it still has to read the 10-20 XML tags contained in "roll" to figure out what it does).As for data (such as characters, etc.) I do plan on those being kept in XML format.  They should be very simple and small snippets, so I don't see performance being an issue.  They're just being used as a data store.I picture the engine having a stack, as to be expected, contexts that the engine is currently running in.  A particular context can contain its own unique set of functions and variables.  I haven't really looked into it, but I believe a context can only have access to its own local functions and variables and those that are global, so there would be no long walk up the stack to find where something is declared (important as every other RPG ML function call has some sort of variable reference).I also might experiment with some sort of caching mechanism if it seems to need it.</blockquote>

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