On Sun, 27 May 2001, Kathryn Andersen wrote:
[...]
[ Baruch wrote this bit ]
> > The implementation as I expect it to be, will not force you to use one
> > language over the other, only if you want the official scripts you'll
> > need the official language. There is a need however to make the
> > scripting language easy enough for as many as users as possible so that
> > most of the users will not need to have multiple languages in LyX.
>
> That's why I'm glad that GIMP now has two scripting languages. Scheme
> was the official one, but they added the perl module after that. I
> admit I haven't yet learnt how to script for GIMP, but it's far more
> likely now, because I don't have to learn a whole new language as well
> as learning the GIMP-specific things needed to script GIMP.
>
> So as for languages that people are likely to know, you've got Lisp (for
> all those emacs-Lisp folks), and Perl, and the next New Thing, Python.
> I don't know about the knowledge-base for Scheme... and I've never heard
> of Icon.
FWIW, a number of Python folk are interested in LyX -- both for personal
use (with python.cls etc.) and as a possible unofficial documenting tool.
Their official documenting tools are a couple of scripts and any text
editor and they aren't about to change that in a hurry. I know a couple
of people in particular who are Python gurus (one's a Python Team member)
who would love to get their hands dirty in LyX (with Python of course).
Then as a second official language we have Perl. Maybe this would
encourage Perl mongers to test and maintain the lonely reLyX. Or we just
let the Python gurus rewrite reLyX in Python ;-) Python is supposed to
be faster than Perl anyway :P
Anyway, past discussions have usually ended up with Python as best because
it's readable/writable even for newbies. Scheme/Lisp usually dropped as a
bad idea because no-one cares to type all the ()'s and Perl as a possible
second language.
Allan. (ARRae)
