[sc34wg3] CTM: Proposal for %mergemap directive

[Robert Barta]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 01:52:55PM +0100, Lars Heuer wrote:
> <http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0935.htm#dir-mergemap>
> The %mergemap directive is currently defined as follows:
> 
>     mergemap-directive ::= '%mergemap' iri-ref notation?
>     notation           ::= iri-ref
>     
> Where the optional "notation" is again an IRI.
> 
> 
> I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to change the syntax to
> 
>     notation ::= string
> 
> The "string" is case-insensitive and a CTM parser must recognize the
> following values: "xtm" and "ctm", but other values like "AsTMa=" etc.
> are allowed, too.

> Comments? Thoughts?

I am _very_ sceptical about the restriction to IRIs to address a
stream of CTM content and also _very_ sceptical about the restriction
to a "notation".

Just as examples what I want to do:

  %mergemap cat people.txt | awk '{ magic here}' |
  # executes this pipe under UNIX and transforms it into CTM

or

  %mergemap "echo '...' | mysql --batch | ... |" x my-template ($2, $1, $4)
  # executes a MySQL query and uses the my-template to generate CTM content

I do not think that preempting the syntax of %mergemap (and/or
%include) is the way to go....

\rho