Howdy, Roger, responses to your questions below:
On Feb 7, 2022, at 1:21 PM, Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
Hello Tom,
I have a few questions about Ox:
1. Is there a complete, up-to-date, easy-to-read Ox manual?
Kurt Bischoff, the original (primary?) Ox developer at Iowa State University, wrote a tutorial (dtd 5 Nov 1993) and a reference manual (dtd 14 Nov 1993).
I have attempted to keep both documents current as I’ve expanded on the original Ox functionality - the reference manual more extensively than the tutorial. Both documents are in the ‘./docs’ distribution directory, in both PDF and in LaTeX source form.
I believe that both documents are current, although it is certainly possible that I’ve missed something. To date, this is a one-man labor of love ;-)
As to whether the documents are “easy-to-read”, you will have to be the judge of that.
I suspect that the reference manual might be considered a bit cryptic if one isn’t already familiar with attribute grammars. Furthermore, the
limitations of the current Ox translator (in particular, allowing arbitrary C/C++ code in an attribute's definition), make it easy to create hidden attribute dependencies that will randomly break the Ox-generated code.
I’m open to constructive comments from users, but so far no one has said anything to me directly.
2. Are there any published books on Ox?
No … do you want to write one?
The original Ox distribution includes an example compiler for a small programming language, GPPL, built using Ox (and originally Yacc and Lex). The compiler generates C source code. I have maintained the GPPL compiler, but only to the extent required to enable it to compile, link & execute.
Kurt Bischoff wrote a report describing the compiler: "GPPL: A Small Block-Structured Imperative Programming Language Implemented using Ox”, Iowa State University TR#92-32, December, 1992. A Postscript file of that document from Kurt’s last known Ox distribution is in the ‘./gppl’ distribution directory.
3. Is there an Ox group on Stack Overflow?
Not that I am aware of.
I did a search just now on the Stack Overflow web and only found 2 questions that were obviously about Ox, both from the same user in April & May of 2021.
I guess I should investigate how to set up a trigger to get notified of future Ox questions.
4. Are there any commercial products that were developed using Ox?
Not to my knowledge. I don’t get much user feedback, save for the
infrequent bug report.
According to the SourceForge server, there have been a total of 472 downloads of the various Ox distribution files since December 2018, which was when I first registered the project. That tells me is there is a non-trivial level
of interest, so I’ve kept at it.
Regards,
Tom Shields
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