>Alain: I have been thinking along these lines too.
>Making OpenTalk more English-like than HyperTalk by
>liberal-usage of the "the" keyword. The parser would
>merely have to ignore this keyword when interpreting a
>script.
Alain,
"the" is very useful in making interpreting a script faster, as it
indicates to the interpreter that the next token must be a function or
property name. I'm not sure I'd want it to become syntactic sugar...
>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?
Bypassing the hierarchy makes scripts faster, whereas "send" causes scripts
to be slower, since every time the expression needs to be reinterpreted.
> Or perhaps some syntax
>like below:
>
>the abs [of HyperCard] of <numericEpression>
>
>1. the abs of <numericEpression> -- traverses
>hierarchy
>
>2. the abs of HyperCard of <numericEpression> -- NOT
It's not that bad an idea, but using "of" twice isn't good. It confuses
people. I'd prefer something like:
the abs of -5 directly
or something along that line. This would also go with the "via" argument
SuperCard supports, which I like. FYI, SC allows saying
put myFunction(15) via cd btn 5 into myVar
to allow calling a function inside another part.
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
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