🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi folks !

This article is quite long even if it contains only a single question.
So, read the following 3 lines and skip the rest if you are not interested.

Is there any _standard_ (proposal or "de facto") for "precise in-house
data-format describing" ?


The reason for my question is that I (as many others too) have :

Machine X running A-language programs and having files/messages in M-format
and
Machine Y running B-language programs and having files/messages in N-format
etc. and
Persons/Manuals knowing the machines, languages and formats very well

**** BUT ****

I don't have :

"General Purpose Contents Language" (GPCL) for describing the different
machine- and language-dependent data structures and formats of the different
systems in such way that I could:

Do a "General Purpose Converting Program" (GPCP) in language C that (compiles
in every machine X, Y etc. and) takes the GPL-descriptions of the various
formats (M, N etc.) to create and interpret  "General Purpose O-format
(EDIFACT) files" to exchange data between the different systems.

I hope the following picture is worth of 1000 more words :-):


                           |-----------|
                           |   GPCL    |  Description for every
                           |   format  |  (machine,language,format)
                           |   desc.   |  -tuple that is needed
                           |-----------|
Logical                          |
contents                         |
description                      V
|-------------|            |-----------|           |-------------|
| Contents    |            |  GPCP     |           |  O-format   |
| description |----------->|  to do    |<--------->|  files/msgs |
| (EDI/ODA    |            | "the job" |           |  (EDIFACT/  |
|  ASN.1 etc) |            |           |           |   T.400     |
|-------------|            |-----------|           |-------------|
                                 A
                                 |                 to here and vice versa
                                 V
                           |-----------|
                           | In-house  |  
                           | file      |  From here
                           |-----------|
                           
I know standards (EDIFACT ISO 9735, ODA ISO 8613 etc.) to describe the
logical contents and formats of the files/messages, but I don't know any
standard with which I could describe the physical contents (bit by bit)
of the data in the various machine/language/file-format combinations.

Is there any standard way for the bit-by-bit description (GPCL) ?
Does anybody (IEEE, ISO ) use it for their purposes ? Is it simple
(== How do you define IEEE floating point number using it) ?

I hope that you don't say that "The only GPCL I know is English.", because
I am not sure I can do the general interpreter for that language :-).

(Ok, there was more than one single question in this article, but anyhow:)

Please, send your answers/comments to me by electronic mail (or is this
worth of general discussion in this/other newsgroup ?). Thanks in advance.

Matti

mjk@vtsai2.sai.vtt.fi
=====================