Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.albasani.net!newsreader4.netcologne.de!news.netcologne.de!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!198.186.194.249.MISMATCH!transit3.readnews.com!news-out.readnews.com!news-xxxfer.readnews.com!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: Quinn Tyler Jackson Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Public statement about Meta-S and The Grammar Forge Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2011 07:55:01 -0800 Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 82 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <11-12-013@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com X-Trace: leila.iecc.com 1323228045 51475 64.57.183.58 (7 Dec 2011 03:20:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 03:20:45 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: tools, administrivia Posted-Date: 06 Dec 2011 22:20:45 EST X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.compilers:385 Hello. [ I ask John's indulgence with this bit of administratrivia. I am posting this in comp.compilers because this is where I have posted about Meta-S over the years, and this is where the other parser generator authors also seem to congregate. This forum is also highly indexed, searchable, and is moderated. Thus, I figure this is where various authorities who discuss parser generators come to be informed "from the source". - qtj] I have noticed various references and public speculation about the Meta-S parsing system and The Grammar Forge. I have also received private queries about the technical and legal status of the system. * Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated. * The Meta-S parsing system is alive and well and under daily development. * For a time in early the early 2000's, I was partnered with SandStone (VisualParse++) on a resale agreement. That arrangement dissolved on very good terms some years ago. * For a time, I was partnered with Thothic Technology Partners, LLC. I reacquired the IP on good terms and am still partnered with TTP. * I own and continue to develop the system, and am partnered with Black Dog Research, LLC. All business development and licensing is through BDR -- I am the technical R&D lead, doing business as Q Agamemnon Technologies. * No other party is authorized to be distributing the system, where here "no other party" means quite definitively: "NO OTHER PARTY." Although I mention some technical aspects of the parser publicly, much of what Meta-S is currently capable of is under strict non-disclosure for IP protection reasons. The last definitive public disclosures are contained in the book Adapting to Babel. To the best of my knowledge, the last definitive in-depth third-party citations can be found in: Dick Grune and Ceriel J.H. Jacobs, Parsing Techniques--A Practical Guide, (2nd ed.), Springer Verlag, (In Press) 2006. Some technical nuts and bolts disclosures: * The system is an adaptive parser. I had a large part in this Wikipedia article, which pretty much sums up what that implies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_grammar * The system uses the adaptive(k) algorithm. (Essentially an adaptive predictive infinite look ahead system.) Since the exact constraints of this algorithm (outlined in Adapting to Babel) are specific to Meta-S, I chose not to rehash some variant of LL or whathaveyou, and asked a third party to coin a term. * The formal underpinnings of Meta-S are known as the Meta-S Calculus. The quick summary of this is "adaptive set theory." * As discussed in Grune et al (ibid.), although Meta-S is capable of accepting Type 0 languages, in practice it does so in O(n^m) time where here m < 3. Grammars have been written to accept Collatz sequences, Fibonacci, Catalan numbers, RNA pseudoknots, English, C++, C#, et cetera ad nauseam, and never in worse than O(n^3), and often in linear time. * The system has a visual development environment (The Grammar Forge) that runs on Windows systems (7, Vista, XP), but the parsing engine is more or less portable to any system with a C++ compiler that handles standard C++. It has been compiled into 64-bit and runs just fine. It also can handle UNICODE. * Although adaptive, the system can be used to generate C++ hosted grammars that are compiled statically as well. * As already mentioned, there are features that cannot be discussed for IP protection reasons. Any specific questions are best directed either to: http://blackdogresearch.com/ or to me at thothic.quinn@gmail.com. Cheers, Quinn Tyler Jackson