sphere_project : Message: RE: [sphere_project] Isaacs proposal

As I mentioned in the other thread I tried PHP and Python with my own projects and found both of them to be badly lacking. For one, they are very difficult to integrate into an external application.

My personal problem with RealBasic is that it is very expensive: several hundred dollars for each platform you want to use it on. For an open source project that'd be quite out of the picture, as the code would not be useful to very many people. If it's the best way to go though, then it's a possibility.

My idea was to use an XML based scripting language that presents an outline view to the user. So basically, you would have something that looks like this in an interface:

> on mouseUp

> say 'Hello world!'

Double clicking on the > on the first line would collapse or expand that block of code. The code could be represented in XML as:

</item>

You could get a bit more XML typical representation:

</on>

But I'd probably prefer something in the middle; flow control and structural things would be their own elements, commands would be simple item elements:

</on>

Then the only thing you have to parse is the very simple "say 'Hello world!'" string. Of course if this expression is more complex, the second solution of going full XML becomes a bit more attractive.

Remember this is just an idea and I'm not positive how "xTalk-like" it could scale to, but I bet it would get pretty close while eliminating some complexity of a full parser. This kind of stuff does work very, very well for Radio UserLand.

-----Original Message-----
From: sphere_project@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sphere_project@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Glenn Meader
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 12:15 PM
To: sphere_project@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sphere_project] Isaacs proposal

So what syntax would you use, if not xTalk?

I assume you get a scripting language parser that already exists and is Open Source, or otherwise freely available.

I can think of several options:

1. Javascript (ECMAscript)

2. BASIC (a BASIC with the ability to reference objects e.g. VBscript)

3. Python

4. TCL

5. ???

Another alternative is to use RealBasic to implement a HC UI and DB for stacks and then use its built-in RBscript capablility to provide on-the-fly scripting. http://www.applelinks.com/rbu/071/

This is attractive because RealBasic supports objects pretty well and creates cross-platform GUI apps that run on Mac, Win and Linux.

I see difficulties in gracefully handling scripting errors though.

> That project fell apart because I wrote it in VB 6, no one was interested in it, and I made some big mistakes early in it's database's design.

Perhaps some of your VB6 code would be easily ported to RealBasic.

From: sphere_project@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sphere_project@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Isaac Raway
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 7:34 AM
To: sphere_project@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [sphere_project] WildFire/Sphere Project Archive

To sum it up, the goals for a project I'd be involved in would be:

    * User accessible

    * UI / simple syntax blended scripting

    * Very fast interface prototyping

    * Fast database backend: backgrounds are tables (or close to them, perhaps an abstraction on top of the real tables)

    * Same functionality on Mac and Windows (who cares what you use?)

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