I just joined the forum under Federico Tomassetti invitation, so I wanted to quickly introduce myself to the rest of users.
My name is Tristano Ajmone and I live in Turin Italy. My main field of interest is digital publishing and software documentation using lightweight markup syntaxes like AsciiDoc. I have no practical experience yet in creating a language from scratch, but I started to dig into the topic because I wanted to try and create a markup syntax of my own, one targeting the creation of documentation from source code file, the other targeting digital publications in the field of computer programming.
I thank your for the chance of joining this marvelous group.
Tristano
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You are very welcome to the group Tristano!
I am mere the group’s enthusiastic passionate wannabe of a court jester with Exceedingly BIG Ideas!
I too have no practical experience and currently face a very steep and long learning curve!
Cheers and Best Wishes,
Mark Gillam
Hi Tristano
I did not know we were based in the same city 
It is a pleasure to have you among us
Indeed we are.
Thanks, and it’s a pleasure for me to have the chance to join this amazing discovery-adventure. I believe that closed-communities like this have the potential to develop a comfort zone of privacy where people can freely exchange their ideas, build virtual-rapport and pioneer new frontiers.
I am a firm believer in the principle that self-taught experimenters (like me and you) can contribute precious insights in advanced fields which are usually the domain of the academic — because we can represent the point of view of the wider user-base, and thus highlight practical aspects of real-case applications.
For example, although I’m not a code-contributor to neither pandoc nor Asciidoctor, I’ve suggested various new features which ultimately were added to these tools. Some time being a passionate user (especially a stubborn one, which doesn’t give up easily) leads to experimenting new potentiality and pushing the boundaries of existing tool, which can open the door to new uses not originally contemplated by their developers.
Besides, before starting using pandoc and Asciidoctor I had a working experience in digital publications using GUI applications. The desire to switch to light-weight markup syntaxes rose when I discovered the benefits of using VCS tools like Git for collaborative editing, and the obvious advantages of working on text source files (as opposed to binary proprietary formats). So I came to these tools with a real-world luggage of experience in printing books according to editorial standards — a practical experience which many tool developers often don’t have, since they usually come from a software development background — many of them never experienced the furious outbursts of an editor who spotted an hyphen being used to separate dates ranges (1990-2000) instead of the en-dash (1990–2000), which is considered a capital sin by good publishing houses! and other typographical issues that might seem trivial minutiae to those used to web-publishing or technical publications (especially software books).
I clearly see that today, thanks to the Internet and the strength of the open source movement, there’s a growing interest on how to create DSLs and compilers even outside the academic sphere, with many curious enthusiasts willing to make the leap from hobbyist programmers to explorers of advanced application fields. Thanks to the efforts of open source frameworks and dedicated tools, this is becoming every day a more realistic prospect — and I think that the number of non-specialistic tutorials are a testimony to this trend.
We will have to try to keep in touch. I am very much a radical. But feel Language Engineering NEEDS its radicals, apostates and heretics.
One of my posts has already been deleted on this site. As both:
ONE: I used the phase: ‘DIRELY DIRELY Deranged and Demented’ to describe our current:
- computer software and hardware,
- integrated development environments,
- gamengines and gamemakers,
- Language Engineering tool libraries and resource libraries,
- computer languages generations,
- development tool libraries and
- computer science and technology generally;
(I felt at the time and still feel that that was a perfectly fair assessment thereof).
TWO: My post was not technical enough. Even though it was entitled: ‘Language Engineering: a VERY RADICAL philosophy’. (Who would have guessed philosophy HAD to be technical?)
Doubtless my literary skills are by no means on par with your own (I am largely self-educated) though I do what I can.
My email address is: hyper5ai@yahoo.com.au
Sincerely
Your Friend,
Mark.