Title: Curl: a language for web content
Authors: Steve Ward, Mat Hostetter
Addresses: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. Curl Corporation, Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract: We describe a language designed for the representation of a broad spectrum of web content, including formatted text, graphics, and programmed application-level function. The approach described maps conventional markup tags to underlying, more general programming constructs, and provides local extensibility of the markup language by addition of programmed objects, procedures, and macros to the underlying object-oriented programming language. An implementation strategy based on a mix of static and dynamic just-in-time compilation techniques is described. The discussion focuses on a number of specific technical challenges raised by the language|s breadth and performance goals, and the impact of these issues on Curl|s architecture.
Keywords: web language; programming language design; content delivery; incremental compilation; extensible language design; markup language.
DOI: 10.1504/IJWET.2003.003259
International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, 2003 Vol.1 No.1, pp.41 - 62
Published online: 21 Aug 2003 *
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