# I am the Watcher. I am your guide through this vast new twtiverse.
# 
# Usage:
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/users              View list of users and latest twt date.
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/twt                View all twts.
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/mentions?uri=:uri  View all mentions for uri.
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/conv/:hash         View all twts for a conversation subject.
# 
# Options:
#     uri     Filter to show a specific users twts.
#     offset  Start index for quey.
#     limit   Count of items to return (going back in time).
# 
# twt range = 1 1
# self = https://watcher.sour.is/conv/yuuca4a
abucci
anthony.buc.ci
View Thread
I imagine something like this might exist already, but I'd like to see a visualization style for formal languages (such as computer languages and configuration languages) that starts with representative concrete examples and builds up the full grammar of the language from there.

I'm saying this after decades of reading language descriptions that start with a huge blob of formal grammar in BNF or some other CFG format, then exposition about what the blob means, and then only much much later, some full examples often without examples of how the examples would be parsed by the grammar that was just introduced.

Sure, given enough practice you can learn to read this, sort of. But it's a gigantic and needless pain in the ass, for no real gain. So of course what you (I?) learn to do after you've read a few of these is to skip past all the grammar stuff and look for the examples, which you then try to parse in your head while consulting the grammar stuff whenever you're confused.

It'd be much more straightforward to present a bunch of examples first, in such a way that you can see quickly and easily how each component of the example would be parsed. Have the full grammar and description in an appendix that's easy to consult if needed. I'm pretty sure both beginners and experts would benefit from this way of writing such things.