Re: OODL: Prototyping OpenTalk syntax

[DeRobertis]

At 1:43 PM -0800 on 11/28/99, Alain Farmer wrote:

>Alain: We would indeed lose the bypass-the-hierarchy
>feature of HyperTalk functions called with the "the"
>keyword. Is it really useful? How frequently is it
>necessary? Couldn't the scripter merely "send" the
>message to HyperCard explicitly when the bypass
>feature is deemed necessary?

No. Send is an evil command (just like 'do'), IMO. It's evil because it
can't be parsed, tokenized, bytecoded, or assembled with the rest of the
script. Each time a send or a do is encountered, it must be parsed, then
bytecoded, then compiled, and only then run.

repeat 10000
        add 1 to x
end repeat

will be much, much, much faster than

repeat 10000
        send "add 1 to x" to hypercard -- or do "add 1 to x"
end repeat

(BTW: I don't intend to send 'add' along the message hierarchy... so this
is a bad example, but still...)

>Or perhaps some syntax
>like below:
>
>the abs [of HyperCard] of <numericEpression>

Well, NuParser should be able to handle it. But it could get confusing to
the user...

Perhaps:

        HyperCard's abs of <expr>