4 Oct 2002: Design Note on CodeWriter Construction

I have published a new design note: Units 01, which is motivated by development item 56.

Currently the process of compiling a template into a CodeWriter is not satisfactory. Directives and the structure of the template are processed alongside the construction of the CodeWriter. Following the general strategy of divide-and-conquer, this design note discusses separating these two processes.

Additionally, the concept of a separate description for the construction of a CodeWriter is proposed. A CodeWriter can be constructed from a list of units, which describe the exact rendering of the template text and script elements. These units are intended as a independent canonical description of the CodeWriter, which can now be represented in a number of ways, the traditional CodeWriter program being merely one of them. This has the advantage that debugging will be easier and unforeseen uses more likely. This fits with one of the general goals of the Jostraca project; that the system should be as extensible as possible, to encourage unforeseen uses.

These changes will not affect backwards compatibility. They will lay the groundwork for many more useful features in future.