Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dom]

Kevin Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> We believe programming should be like
> creativity, like drawing or writing, not like arcane.

Bravo !

-- 
Vous parlez français ? faites un tour sur le groupe francophone !
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Jetez un oeil sur RevoBlog  !
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (ratherlong)

[Richard Gaskin]

jbv wrote:

> I should have written :
> - do you really think that the current Rev / MC IDEs allow us to EASILY
> maintain &
> debug scripts with hundreds or thousands of lines ?
> 
> BTW I know that very long scripts run without any problem in Rev.
> My point wasn't the execution of scripts, but rather the ability to write,
> 
> debug and maintain such long scripts.

Why not just break them up into logical units and use them in backscripts a
and/or libraries?  One library for file handling, another for  UI elements,
another for general utilities

Even on relatively small (<10k lines) projects I tend to do this just to
make getting around easier.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (ratherlong)

[jbv]

Ok guys,

I should have written :
- do you really think that the current Rev / MC IDEs allow us to EASILY
maintain &
debug scripts with hundreds or thousands of lines ?

BTW I know that very long scripts run without any problem in Rev.
My point wasn't the execution of scripts, but rather the ability to write,

debug and maintain such long scripts.
Of course, now there are tools that are somewhat more sophisticated
(I'm still using the old MC IDE, hence my general feeling).
But nevertheless I don't think the whole Rev IDE looks professional
enough to teams of programers used to high end C environment such
as CodeWarror...

But may be I'm wrong... I so much hope I could be wrong 

JB

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (rather long)

[Brian Yennie]

- do you really think that the current Rev / MC IDEs allow us to
maintain &
debug scripts with hundreds or thousands of lines ? Of course not... 
But
Salut, JB,

And my I say that I agree wholehearted with every word you 
wrote...until you ended with the statements I included above:

1.  The stack script of Serendipity Library has 4,566 lines as of the 
latest update.
Ditto here. I have a commercial application condensed into one big 
8,000+ line script. Rev doesn't seem to have any trouble with it. It 
runs without error for months at a time. It also uses sockets for all 
of it's communications (it's a web app). Runs under Rev 2.0, often with 
5+ copies running on an XServe.

For large scripts, I usually:

1) Break them into smaller scripts (duh- but sometimes an advantage, 
sometimes not)
2) Put my own marker functions in (i.e. an empty function 
"UTILITY_FUNCTIONS" before all of my utility functions)

That's about it. They seem to work fine... I've even edited them 
through a b&w Timbuktu session, while the software was running, with 
the debugger.

I'm sure there could be problems I haven't seen, but it seems pretty 
capable to me.

FWIW.

Brian

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (rather long)

[Rob Cozens]

The strongest argument for the legitimacy of Transcript is an army of
well-marketed world-class apps made with it.
...with the Made With Run Rev logo in every About box.:{`)
--
Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm
"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."
from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (rather long)

[Rob Cozens]

- do you really think that the current Rev / MC IDEs allow us to
maintain &
debug scripts with hundreds or thousands of lines ? Of course not... But
CodeWarrior (for instance) does...

So in conclusion, I'm tempted to say that the language itself doesn't
look
amateurish at all (and DOESN'T need to include any C-like syntax).
But OTOH the IDE (especially the scripting & debugging environments)
REALLY look amateurish... And what you gain in productivity because of
the syntax, gets lost at the same time by the poor scripting tools...
Salut, JB,

And my I say that I agree wholehearted with every word you 
wrote...until you ended with the statements I included above:

1.  The stack script of Serendipity Library has 4,566 lines as of the 
latest update.

2.  I just pulled my CodeWarrior v6 Gold edition off a back shelf.  I 
see there is a debugger somewhere on the CD, & I note the need to 
install "debugger nubs" before debugging.  Debug mode (albeit still 
buggy) in Revolution is a pulldown menu away.  Does Code Warrior's 
debug your C source or your compiled C?  If the later, how can you 
make a favorable case for that against Revolution, where I can 
immediately modify the errant code and continue runtime testing 
without rebuilding and/or relinking?  What does CW's debugger do 
better than Revolution's in combination with the variable watcher & 
and message watcher.  I compare Revolution's debugger favorably with 
Data General's PL/1 online source debugger I used for several years.
--

Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm
"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."
from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (rather long)

[Richard Gaskin]

jbv wrote:

> The main point I want to make is that this discussion about introducing
> C-like syntax in x-Talk is totally pointless, especially if the only
> goal is to make Transcript look less amateurish...

Amen.  The strongest argument for the legitimacy of Transcript is an army of
well-marketed world-class apps made with it.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (rather long)

[jbv]

>
> >>  because we have a
> >> language that thinks like we do, not like the compiler does."
>

Well, even if I somehow agree with the above sentence (because I more
or less understand what it implies), I must confess I don't really like
it...

IMHO computers and languages DO NOT THINK. Only programers
(and human beings in general) do. And in the context of computer
programing, they even think better (faster & more efficiently) when the
underlying concepts of programing have been well understood.
I already made that point in a post from yesterday, but surprisingly
nobody commented (which means it was incredibly smart or totally
dumb). Please allow me some more comments on that topic.

In 1980-81 I've been involved (as a programer with some background
in psychology & ergonomics) in an experiment in which a Logo machine
(Seymour Pappert's language) had been introduced in a classroom for
kids of 9 & 10 years of age. It used the french version of Logo, but
nevertheless the syntax was so closed to everyday language that the kids

were able to concentrate only on the basic concepts of programing
(sequential
set of instructions, variables, loops, if-then-else, etc).
They used the machine only a few hours a week, but at the end of the
school
year, most of them completed amazing projects (mostly animated 2D
graphics).

To me, HC (and X-talk in general) is just another offspring of the Logo
concept : it allows beginners to approach (and understand faster) the
basic
concepts behind programing more than cryptic languages like C or Java.
But in all prog. languages, these basic concepts ARE THE SAME.
And the natural feeling of the syntax shouldn't hide the fact that basic

concepts should be well understood before trying to build any serious
project.

The drawback of the above is that the "natural" syntax of x-Talk can
lure
beginners by letting them think that programing has become "plug &
play",
but they might quickly face desillusion (being unable to debug their own

code) or produce code that works more or less, but is so awfull and
ineficient that it becomes useless.

The main point I want to make is that this discussion about introducing
C-like
syntax in x-Talk is totally pointless, especially if the only goal is to
make
Transcript look less amateurish...

Please consider the following : in theory Rev sets the limit of a script
size to
very high level (don't remember exactly, but several Mb anyway, may be
even
more). This raises 2 questions :
- do you really think that a script with several hundreds or thousands
of lines
doesn't need very accurate and careful conception & structure, and of
course
comments (just like any C program needs) ? And don't you think a serious

and solid background as a professional programmer could help ?
- do you really think that the current Rev / MC IDEs allow us to
maintain &
debug scripts with hundreds or thousands of lines ? Of course not... But

CodeWarrior (for instance) does...

So in conclusion, I'm tempted to say that the language itself doesn't
look
amateurish at all (and DOESN'T need to include any C-like syntax).
But OTOH the IDE (especially the scripting & debugging environments)
REALLY look amateurish... And what you gain in productivity because of
the syntax, gets lost at the same time by the poor scripting tools...

Thanks for reading.
JB

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dan Shafer]

On Feb 10, 2004, at 5:29 PM, Frank Leahy wrote:

On Wednesday, February 11, 2004, at 01:14  AM, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Supporting JavaScript is an interesting idea.  I probably wouldn't
used it, but I wonder if it would bring others to Revolution.

And the new Director supports JavaScript alongside Lingo syntax. My
bet: it'll just confuse everyone. (And I love Lingo, BTW)
~~
Dan Shafer, Revolutionary
Hah!  Lingo supports = (equal sign) as an assignment operator (plus 
lots of overloading +=, -=, etc.), so I guess "x = 1" can't be all 
that bad :-)

Frank...never said x=1 was bad, just that it was not as good as "put 1 
into x" in terms of my mind and readability!

hah! ;-)

My bet is that it will lower the barrier against using it for those 
who know Javascript already -- "Hmmm, Director has Javascript syntax?  
Maybe it won't take as long to get up to speed as I previously thought 
it would."

Well, sure it'll lower the barrier for those who already know JS. I 
just don't think that's such a big audience. JS app developers as a set 
probably don't have much Venn Diagram overlap with multimedia 
developers.

-- Frank

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Rob Cozens]

As someone else mentioned, "x = 1" already has meaning in xTalk
Frank, et al:

For the record, I'm not just waxing theoretical here:  look through 
the handlers in any component of Serendipity Library and you will 
find statements were I use "x = 1" [or more likely "x is 1", but 
syntactically equivalent] to set boolean values.

* put (argument1 = true) into argument1 -- defaults argument1 to 
false if no argument is passed in the call.  Among other things, this 
lets calls to SDB handlers with multiple arguments, eg:

on findSDBRecord 
@sdbBuffer,exactKey,fieldDelimiter,itemList,setPosition,searchForward,searchCriteria,cutoffKey,recordDelimiter,unlockRecord

to be referenced by Revolutionists who don't need to override 
defaults as though the syntax were "on findSDBRecord @sdbBuffer"

* put (field 6 = empty) into skipField6

* put (field "Customer Balance" = 0) into addCustomerToCallList

Accommodating your request would force moi, at least, to rewrite MANY handlers.

Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm
"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."
from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)
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Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Ed McCabe]

 From: Ed McCabe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: 2004/02/11 Wed AM 09:37:31 EST
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: 
> 
> Dan said:
> 
> I've resisted comment as long as I can. It's torture.
> 
> Most of my feelings have been expressed by others, but there is one
> point that I think is perhaps under-appreciated.
> 
> The notion that we should add to the Transcript syntax to make the
> program less "beginnerish" (which I agree it isn't anyway except
> compared to the absolutely incomprehensible C and Perl languages, which
> I few as write-only) just because we *can* misses a key point.
> 
> A new person coming into the environment and looking for how to do
> something looks at scripts and docs. Unless you not only implement new
> and more complex syntax *in addition to* the regular syntax rather than
> instead of it, but also do not document it and discourage its use in
> scripts a newbie is likely to stumble over while learning, you still
> run the risk of alienating new programmers who look at the (let's face
> it) ugly C-like syntax and immediately head for REALBasic. The only
> other alternative, really, is to resort to levels or layers of access
> in a (generally futile but well-intended) effort to hide this stuff
> from people for whom it might be dangerous.
> 
> Nope. I'm with those who say to RunRev, "The syntax is beautiful. We
> don't care if 'real programmers' (whoever *they* are) think it's
> amateurish. We'll be happy to keep making a living by writing apps
> faster and cheaper than all those professionals do because we have a
> language that thinks like we do, not like the compiler does."
> 
> Dan out.
> 
> 
> As an amateur programer/business owner who relies daily on HC stacks which I
> constructed over 10 years ago and am now converting to Rev, I consider one
> of the most important aspects of an high level X-talk script is that when I
> revisit a script  years after I wrote it - I can read it and figure out what
> I did & now need to do to enhance it.
> 
> I would not have had the time or patience to learn a "real programming
> language" and been unable to develop the system I run my business on.
> 
> Now struggling with learning to take my systems onto the internet based on
> the principles so aptly demonstrated at the seminar.
> 
> The quality of the professionals contributing to this list is the best
> endorsement for Rev.
> 
> Well said Dan
> 
> Ed McCabe

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Richard K. Herz]

Kevin wrote,
>The syntax is neither amateurish, nor only for beginners.  The...
>We're not about to spend time making our virtually self-commenting code...

Hurray!

Rich Herz
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Dept.
University of California, San Diego

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Pierre Sahores]

On 11/2/04 12:27 am, Dan Shafer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

 because we have a
language that thinks like we do, not like the compiler does."
Bien cordialement, Pierre Sahores

100, rue de Paris
F - 77140 Nemours
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[jbv]

Rob,

> JB, and anyone else enamored of C:
>
> Program all the externals you desire!
>
> But if you're only using C for externals, there is no need for C
> syntax in Transcriptand there isn't anyway, IMFO.
> --

100% agreed.

What I meant was : use Transcript for top quality front ends,
and C for critical high speed tasks. IOW both tools are complementary,
but each tool has its own purposes.

Example : why should I bother with C to build front ends, and
who could be fool enough to try to code a realtime FFT in Transcript ?

JB

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Mark Brownell]

On Wednesday, February 11, 2004, at 05:55  AM, Rob Cozens wrote:

Maybe it should be "x := 1" for Pascal programmers; or how about "x = 
1;" for PL/1 programmers?
Maybe it could be "x :=) 1" for I just dumped my girl-friend...

mb

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[xbury . cs]

although a C and asm compiler would be nice,

C has this nice feature for other language usage...

on mouseup
c{
   do some c code real fast ;
  asm{
do some assembler code at warpspeed;
  }
}

See? No need for those overcomplicated externals... ;)

-=-
Xavier Bury
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Kevin Miller]

On 11/2/04 12:27 am, Dan Shafer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Nope. I'm with those who say to RunRev, "The syntax is beautiful. We
> don't care if 'real programmers' (whoever *they* are) think it's
> amateurish. We'll be happy to keep making a living by writing apps
> faster and cheaper than all those professionals do because we have a
> language that thinks like we do, not like the compiler does."

The syntax is neither amateurish, nor only for beginners.  The English-like
nature of our language is one of our product's key differentiators and is
appreciated by beginners and professionals alike.  If you have a lot of
programming experience background it make take a little getting used to.
However I've seen this pattern again and again: once you are used to it, you
don't tend to want to go back.

Not only would adding the ability to code in other ways be a huge use of
resources best spent fixing bugs and polishing the feature set, it would
remove one of our key benefits.  We believe programming should be like
creativity, like drawing or writing, not like arcane.  There is no inherent
reason that philosophy can't equally apply to the professional as to the
beginner.

No matter how used you get to C, PERL, Java, etc., at the end of the day,
code written in Transcript is a lot more readable.  We're not about to spend
time making our virtually self-commenting code like other programming
languages for no other reason than to be like other languages.

Kind regards,

Kevin 

Kevin Miller ~ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ http://www.runrev.com/
Runtime Revolution - User-Centric Development Tools

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Rob Cozens]

the association
of Xtalk and C can lead to a tremendous power in high end
projects, Rev & Xtalk being used to build top quality front
ends (with unbeatable productivity & cost ratios) while C
being used in externals
JB, and anyone else enamored of C:

Program all the externals you desire!

But if you're only using C for externals, there is no need for C 
syntax in Transcriptand there isn't anyway, IMFO.
--

Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm
"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."
from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Rob Cozens]

Thirty years ago I wrote a proposal for using lisp for a distributed 
control system project.


Hi Dar,

Thirty years ago I was responsible for procurement and development of 
Oakland Police Department's MIS.  While the City of Oakland DP Dept. 
was a COBOL shop, Boeing Computer Systems had just delivered OPD's 
Computer Assisted Dispatching System in FORTRAN, and the daily CAD 
activity logs were the principal input to MIS; so MIS was written in 
FORTRAN.

A year or so after I left OPD, they hired Coopers & Lybrand (sp?) to 
review the system.  Their main criticism was the selection of the 
programming language: "FORTRAN" is for scientific programming and 
COBOL is for business programming."  Of course no mention of the CAD 
system, Boeing's choice of FORTRAN, or the need for OPD to maintain 
in-house FORTRAN expertise to support CAD.

Their "analysis" also stated, "There are more COBOL programmers than 
FORTRAN programmers; so it will be easier to find programming staff." 
Real world: when I added a programmer to my staff, both candidates 
sent me by City Personnel were FORTRAN programmers recently hired by 
City DP and scheduled to be trained in COBOL.

The MIS system was used daily for over 15 years.  What "everybody 
knows" is often nada.
--

Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm
"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."
from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Rob Cozens]

I wish xTalk had some ADDITIONAL constructs that made it more 
accessible to computer scientists and professional programmers. 
Both because without them xTalk look amateurish, and therefore less 
likely to be used by professionals, and because it would make it 
significantly easier to port code from other languages to xTalk.

It's that simple.  This isn't an either or proposition.  Adding 
support for "x = 1" would have no impact on the RR IDE.
Good morning, Frank,

Two points:

* I think any knowledgeable computer scientist and professional 
programmer looking to adopt a new platform should personally check 
out the relative capabilities of the platform to assure themselves 
they are getting the tool they need to do the job they want to do. 
Capabilities are more important than syntax, and those who wish to 
believe the negative portrait the press has painted of HyperCard 
without checking for themselves are the losers.

* As someone else mentioned, "x = 1" already has meaning in xTalk: it 
is true if x is 1 and false if x is some other value.  And how does 
"x=1" help anyone who hasn't previously used C?  Maybe it should be 
"x := 1" for Pascal programmers; or how about "x = 1;" for PL/1 
programmers?

Anyway, the issue is one of opinion, and yours is as good or better 
than this foole's.  Still, my opinion is HyperTalk, & all xTalks by 
extension, have received invalid criticism by reviewers that don't 
have a clue as to its power and capabilities, and potential users who 
buy into that criticism without checking for themselves are doing 
themselves a disservice.
--

Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm
"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."
from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Jim Carwardine]

I agree wholeheartedly.

Here's my rant... I've been involved continuously with computers since 1967
(Comp. Sci, 70) and programmed in just about every commercial language on
just about every type of commercial computer AND THEY ALL SUCK.  I bought a
Mac in 1984 and Hypercard in 1987 AND THEY DON'T SUCK... end of story.

Anybody who thinks owning and operating a computer must include some pain
and unique knowledge of lingo and operating systems as some kind of "mark of
[professional] pride and excellence" is really in some kind of time/space
warp.

That Micro$oft, IBM, et al have managed to get 98% of us to think this is
normal is marketing at it's zenith.

Sorry... I'll go back to my normal pale palour now... :-@  Jim

on 2/11/04 10:37 AM, Ed McCabe wrote:

> I would not have had the time or patience to learn a "real programming
> language" and been unable to develop the system I run my business on.

-- 

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Scott Rossi]

On 2/10/04 7:23 PM, "Dar Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>> While I can't say I've pushed the engine as hard as the combined
>> talent of
>> this list, in my experience the engine's performance has been
>> exceptional.
> 
> I find this interesting.  And frustrating.
> 
> When the general assumption among the community is that the engine is
> perfect, then bug reports are considered spurious.

Hmm.  I did try to qualify my post with "in my experience..." but maybe that
was too subtle.  In any event, what *I* find frustrating is that you seem to
have ignored the message of my message.  What I suggested was, try to check
for problems you encounter outside the IDE.  You *might* get lucky and find
the problem was IDE related, not a fault of the engine.  Not only does this
benefit you, it will benefit the Rev guys in helping to track down where the
problem may reside.  I don't see how this suggestion lessens the importance
of bug reports.

BTW, if you re-read my post, you may notice that the word "perfect" is not
used anywhere.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Development & Design
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Alex Rice]

On Feb 10, 2004, at 8:23 PM, Dar Scott wrote:

The best way to make the engine rock-solid is to knock over the idol.
Are you talking concrete, or just sedimentary sandstone or volcanic 
pumice? I used to prefer the term "bullet proof" but I recently viewed 
on The Science Channel that the firing of a spear point with a high 
velocity air cannon into a coat of replica Viking chain-mail...
oh never mind.   ;-)

I think I agree with what you are saying. To paraphrase: Let's never 
let cheerleading and advocacy blind us to actual bugs, which obviously 
can occur even in the metacard "engine" and not just in the Runrev IDE.

--
Alex Rice | Mindlube Software | http://mindlube.com
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Robert Brenstein]

On Tuesday, February 10, 2004, at 07:05 PM, Scott Rossi wrote:

While I can't say I've pushed the engine as hard as the combined talent of
this list, in my experience the engine's performance has been exceptional.
I find this interesting.  And frustrating.

When the general assumption among the community is that the engine 
is perfect, then bug reports are considered spurious.

When I first started using Revolution two years ago, I assumed bugs 
would be fixed quickly.  This was a stupid and costly error on my 
part.  The roadblock I hit was the logic that Metacard is perfect, 
therefore the bug reports are wrong.  One crucial bug took over 7 
months to fix.  There were a handful of sockets bugs and yet folks 
were blindly using Revolution for all kinds of Internet apps. (The 
open process bugs are a mess and I don't even bother to report those 
any more.)  Did folks see my bugs and wonder whether that would 
affect their internet apps?  I didn't see it.  I suggested to one 
person his problems might be related to mine and his went away after 
mine were fixed and he shrugged it off.  Another complained that 
libURL was flakey.  Well, duh!

The best way to make the engine rock-solid is to knock over the idol.

Dar Scott
Nobody said perfect. Rock-solid does not mean bug-free. No program 
that has some complexity ever is. But MetaCard crashed barely ever (I 
found a couple ways to crash it but I was pushing it), most features 
worked as expected, and bugs were addressed in a reasonable time. I 
don't think we are trying to idealize/idolize MC. It was not perfect. 
But we want Rev to reach its level and better.

One significantly different thing about Rev is that not all 
features/functionality are implemented in the engine. And Rev team 
added a whole bunch of new stuff on top or next to the old stuff 
(when the two were developed in parallel). And Rev's IDE is so much 
more complex and introduces a number of kinks and funky behaviors 
that go away when it is turned off.

Robert
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dar Scott]

On Tuesday, February 10, 2004, at 07:05 PM, Scott Rossi wrote:

While I can't say I've pushed the engine as hard as the combined 
talent of
this list, in my experience the engine's performance has been 
exceptional.
I find this interesting.  And frustrating.

When the general assumption among the community is that the engine is 
perfect, then bug reports are considered spurious.

When I first started using Revolution two years ago, I assumed bugs 
would be fixed quickly.  This was a stupid and costly error on my part. 
 The roadblock I hit was the logic that Metacard is perfect, therefore 
the bug reports are wrong.  One crucial bug took over 7 months to fix.  
There were a handful of sockets bugs and yet folks were blindly using 
Revolution for all kinds of Internet apps. (The open process bugs are a 
mess and I don't even bother to report those any more.)  Did folks see 
my bugs and wonder whether that would affect their internet apps?  I 
didn't see it.  I suggested to one person his problems might be related 
to mine and his went away after mine were fixed and he shrugged it off. 
 Another complained that libURL was flakey.  Well, duh!

The best way to make the engine rock-solid is to knock over the idol.

Dar Scott



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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Judy Perry]

A, but which Lingo?  Verbose or dot.syntax?

(Which I daresay confuses people just as you suggested in your previous
post).

Judy

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Dan Shafer wrote:

> And the new Director supports JavaScript alongside Lingo syntax. My
> bet: it'll just confuse everyone. (And I love Lingo, BTW)

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Scott Rossi]

>> I think that one of the selling points of MetaCard was its reputation
>> of being rock-solid. Rev should strive for the same.
> 
> Revolution might have a larger customer base and a customer base
> consisting of a broader range of customers.  This might contribute to a
> greater number of reported bugs as every nook and cranny is trampled.
> So for RunRev to maintain a like reputation of Revolution being
> rock-solid, the product may have to be many times over more rock-solid.
> RunRev should strive for that.

Related: when you come across an issue that hinders your project, make sure
to test the problem with the Rev IDE suspended.  More often than not, you
may find the issue is IDE related, and not a fault of the underlying engine.
The Rev IDE is still very new compared to what drives it.  Even MC's
idiosyncrasies could be bypassed in many cases by circumventing the IDE.

While I can't say I've pushed the engine as hard as the combined talent of
this list, in my experience the engine's performance has been exceptional.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Development & Design
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Trevor DeVore]

On Feb 10, 2004, at 4:37 PM, Peter T. Evensen wrote:

Supporting JavaScript is an interesting idea.  I probably wouldn't 
used it, but I wonder if it would bring others to Revolution.

Authorware 7 added support for writing scripts in JavaScript instead 
of the Authorware scripting language.  Not sure why they decided to do 
that, unless they thought it might entice programmers to the 
Authorware camp...  Of course they had to add some Authorware specific 
objects so you could access everything in JS.
Probably because Authorware's scripting language was such a pain :-)

That was the first scripting language I was exposed to and I'm glad 
those days are behind me.

--
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Multimedia
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dar Scott]

On Tuesday, February 10, 2004, at 06:18 PM, Robert Brenstein wrote:

I think that one of the selling points of MetaCard was its reputation 
of being rock-solid. Rev should strive for the same.
Revolution might have a larger customer base and a customer base 
consisting of a broader range of customers.  This might contribute to a 
greater number of reported bugs as every nook and cranny is trampled.  
So for RunRev to maintain a like reputation of Revolution being 
rock-solid, the product may have to be many times over more rock-solid. 
 RunRev should strive for that.

Dar Scott

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Frank Leahy]

On Wednesday, February 11, 2004, at 01:14  AM, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Supporting JavaScript is an interesting idea.  I probably wouldn't
used it, but I wonder if it would bring others to Revolution.

And the new Director supports JavaScript alongside Lingo syntax. My
bet: it'll just confuse everyone. (And I love Lingo, BTW)
~~
Dan Shafer, Revolutionary
Hah!  Lingo supports = (equal sign) as an assignment operator (plus 
lots of overloading +=, -=, etc.), so I guess "x = 1" can't be all that 
bad :-)

My bet is that it will lower the barrier against using it for those who 
know Javascript already -- "Hmmm, Director has Javascript syntax?  
Maybe it won't take as long to get up to speed as I previously thought 
it would."

-- Frank

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Robert Brenstein]

On Feb 10, 2004, at 3:37 PM, Peter T. Evensen wrote:

Supporting JavaScript is an interesting idea.  I probably wouldn't 
used it, but I wonder if it would bring others to Revolution.

Authorware 7 added support for writing scripts in JavaScript 
instead of the Authorware scripting language.  Not sure why they 
decided to do that, unless they thought it might entice programmers 
to the Authorware camp...  Of course they had to add some 
Authorware specific objects so you could access everything in JS.

And the new Director supports JavaScript alongside Lingo syntax. My 
bet: it'll just confuse everyone. (And I love Lingo, BTW)
If RunRev decides to add JavaScript just to be in par with those 
other environments and atract more users, so let be it. I can trust 
that they implement it reasonaly. After all, this can be done (as 
someone suggested) in an OSA-like approach, eliminating any potential 
confusion and keeping Transcript as we know it. However, I really, 
really hope that RunRev first finishes all the things they've already 
started (ie recent pr's), puts a true and serious effort into bug 
hunting (it seem they are getting serious about this), and implements 
the enhancements requested by the current user base. I think that one 
of the selling points of MetaCard was its reputation of being 
rock-solid. Rev should strive for the same.

Robert
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dan Shafer]

On Feb 10, 2004, at 3:37 PM, Peter T. Evensen wrote:

Supporting JavaScript is an interesting idea.  I probably wouldn't 
used it, but I wonder if it would bring others to Revolution.

Authorware 7 added support for writing scripts in JavaScript instead 
of the Authorware scripting language.  Not sure why they decided to do 
that, unless they thought it might entice programmers to the 
Authorware camp...  Of course they had to add some Authorware specific 
objects so you could access everything in JS.

And the new Director supports JavaScript alongside Lingo syntax. My 
bet: it'll just confuse everyone. (And I love Lingo, BTW)



~~
Dan Shafer, Revolutionary
Author of  "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
http://www.revolutionpros.com for more info
Available at Runtime Revolution Store (http://www.runrev.com/RevPress)
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dan Shafer]

I've resisted comment as long as I can. It's torture.

Most of my feelings have been expressed by others, but there is one 
point that I think is perhaps under-appreciated.

The notion that we should add to the Transcript syntax to make the 
program less "beginnerish" (which I agree it isn't anyway except 
compared to the absolutely incomprehensible C and Perl languages, which 
I few as write-only) just because we *can* misses a key point.

A new person coming into the environment and looking for how to do 
something looks at scripts and docs. Unless you not only implement new 
and more complex syntax *in addition to* the regular syntax rather than 
instead of it, but also do not document it and discourage its use in 
scripts a newbie is likely to stumble over while learning, you still 
run the risk of alienating new programmers who look at the (let's face 
it) ugly C-like syntax and immediately head for REALBasic. The only 
other alternative, really, is to resort to levels or layers of access 
in a (generally futile but well-intended) effort to hide this stuff 
from people for whom it might be dangerous.

Nope. I'm with those who say to RunRev, "The syntax is beautiful. We 
don't care if 'real programmers' (whoever *they* are) think it's 
amateurish. We'll be happy to keep making a living by writing apps 
faster and cheaper than all those professionals do because we have a 
language that thinks like we do, not like the compiler does."

Dan out.

~~
Dan Shafer, Revolutionary
Author of  "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
http://www.revolutionpros.com for more info
Available at Runtime Revolution Store (http://www.runrev.com/RevPress)
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Jeanne A. E. DeVoto]

At 8:19 AM +0900 2/11/04, Doug Lerner wrote:
What is xTalk?
It's a generic term for the family of languages of which Transcript 
is one. The first was HyperTalk, and several of them have been of the 
form "somethingTalk" (SuperTalk, MetaTalk), hence "xTalk".
--
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.jaedworks.com
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Peter T. Evensen]

Supporting JavaScript is an interesting idea.  I probably wouldn't used it, 
but I wonder if it would bring others to Revolution.

Authorware 7 added support for writing scripts in JavaScript instead of the 
Authorware scripting language.  Not sure why they decided to do that, 
unless they thought it might entice programmers to the Authorware 
camp...  Of course they had to add some Authorware specific objects so you 
could access everything in JS.

At 08:09 PM 2/9/2004, you wrote:
>(And BTW, if you've ever written a parser you know that
>adding support for this is trivial, and it will have zero impact on
>runtime performance.)
Then why not support JavaScript as an additional syntax to XTalk, at least
that way it will be consistant. It's not all that difficult either
http://www.mozilla.org/js/spidermonkey/
OSA supports multiple languages, so does .NET, and HyperCard used to support
Applescript. It is the framework, the easy way that you can write an app in
a few minutes with a familier easy to use visual object model that matters
like Doug said.
These languages are just tools and some people find some tools easier than
others. Personally I would rather support JavaScript and call it JavaScript
then impact the readability of the XTalk language for others. AFAIK
Macromedia didn't scrap lingo but added support for Javascript.
There are many things that can be added to improve the transcript language
and I'm all for it but prefer to discuss on the improve-list or a list set
up like the old XTalk list.
Tuviah
Peter T. Evensen
http://www.PetersRoadToHealth.com
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Doug Lerner]

On 2/11/04 4:19 AM, "Dar Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> In my mind I am not separating xTalk from Transcript from Revolution.

What is xTalk?

[EMAIL PROTECTED] afraid to reveal my ignorance

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Judy Perry]

Me too!

I've never really understood why we start by teaching the really confusing
stuff and then offer the higher-level languages LAST (AND wonder why we
have horrendous attrition rates...).

It seems much more intuitive to get people to learn the general things in
a visual environment with natural-language like syntax and then transfer
that understanding to the more 'complicated' languages.

I think Decker even published an article in one of the ACM journals about
using HC back in the day for a CS1 course.

Which gets me back to wondering about the demise of the Analytical Engine
he did using HC and, later (ugh!) ToolBook?

Judy

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Marty Billingsley wrote:

> This got me thinking that Rev would be a *great* tool for moving
> students *into* the c/c++/java environment.  My 8th graders understand
>  set the visible of button "x" to false
>and
>  set the label of button "x" to "whatever"
>
> When they get to high school and prepping for the AP exam, which
> is now in java, it would be really nice to be able to equate the
> above statements with:
>  x.visible = false
>and
>  x.label = "whatever"
> (may not have the syntax exactly right, but you know what I mean)
>
> This would be a gentle introduction to a confusing syntax (okay,
> confusing to those seeing it for the first time :-).  I'm always
> looking for ways to spend less time on syntax and more time on
> the bigger picture (how to design good programs, etc.).


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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Judy Perry]

Sure, this is a perfectly valid point.  Most tools have their place; some
are more extensible or perhaps farther-reaching than others...

I largely have no need for the power/etc. of C et al.  Others likely do.

I would just hate for the elegance and comprehensible nature of xTalks to
be compromised because 'it's not how it's done in C' et al.  Lingo is I
think a good example.  Started out okay, now is "a mishmash of C" and its
original xTalk qualities, with the former taking over the latter...

For the folks who need it, the traditional systems programming languages
will probably always be there.  I just hope that xTalks will, too.

Judy

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, jbv wrote:

> Funny how many of you seem to always approach this
> discussion as X-talk vs C (or other languages)...
> I already posted a similar remark to this list (or to the MC
> list), but another point of view is possible : the association
> of Xtalk and C can lead to a tremendous power in high end
> projects, Rev & Xtalk being used to build top quality front
> ends (with unbeatable productivity & cost ratios) while C
> being used in externals for critical high end tasks (realtime
> 3D, data base access and many other industrial & scientific
> processes)...

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Marty Billingsley]

> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Frank wrote
> >>
> This isn't an either or proposition.  Adding support
> for "x = 1" would have no impact on the RR IDE. It would have no impact
> on your ability to use "put 1 into x" all you want.  It would have no
> impact on you, or anyone else using RR today.  But it would make my
> life easier.  And, I believe, it would make RR an easier sell into
> organizations staffed by professional programmers and
> computer-scientists.
> <<
>
> Whilst I (mostly) would not use the c-like syntax, if it can be added
> without causing confusion, then I think you are right that it would help
> to provide a familiar 'handle' to those used to the c-like languages.

This got me thinking that Rev would be a *great* tool for moving
students *into* the c/c++/java environment.  My 8th graders understand
 set the visible of button "x" to false
   and
 set the label of button "x" to "whatever"

When they get to high school and prepping for the AP exam, which
is now in java, it would be really nice to be able to equate the
above statements with:
 x.visible = false
   and
 x.label = "whatever"
(may not have the syntax exactly right, but you know what I mean)

This would be a gentle introduction to a confusing syntax (okay,
confusing to those seeing it for the first time :-).  I'm always
looking for ways to spend less time on syntax and more time on
the bigger picture (how to design good programs, etc.).

One more way in which Rev could be a great tool in the education
environment!

  - marty

--
Marty Billingsley ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools

"We are our choices"
   - Sartre

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dar Scott]

On Tuesday, February 10, 2004, at 10:20 AM, Frank Leahy wrote:

BUT...I wish xTalk had some ADDITIONAL constructs that made it more 
accessible to computer scientists and professional programmers.  Both 
because without them xTalk look amateurish, and therefore less likely 
to be used by professionals, and because it would make it 
significantly easier to port code from other languages to xTalk.
In my mind I am not separating xTalk from Transcript from Revolution.  
What is more important to me is a clean, bug-free, complete 
implementation.  It is a toy implementation that makes something look 
amateurish.  RunRev has always had a commitment to fixing bugs and 
recently has been able to increase resources to that end.  That is what 
removes the amateurish look.

The amateurish look can show up anywhere.  I recently worked with Java 
and was surprised that writeln to a tcp link would push twice, once for 
the text and once for the crlf.  That is amateurish and it has nothing 
to do with the syntax.  This is not a bug as far as I know, but it is a 
tiny performance hit and a pain in debugging.

(I wonder.  Would Scheme or Haskell or Modula or other languages look 
amateurish?)

Dar Scott



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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[revolution]

Frank wrote
>>
This isn't an either or proposition.  Adding support 
for "x = 1" would have no impact on the RR IDE. It would have no impact 
on your ability to use "put 1 into x" all you want.  It would have no 
impact on you, or anyone else using RR today.  But it would make my 
life easier.  And, I believe, it would make RR an easier sell into 
organizations staffed by professional programmers and 
computer-scientists.

Thanks for listening.
<<

Thanks for bringing up this idea.  Rev is one of the most enjoyable forms 
of programming I have done in 20 years, but I appreciate you bringing up 
these suggestions.  It has been an interesting discussion.

Whilst I (mostly) would not use the c-like syntax, if it can be added 
without causing confusion, then I think you are right that it would help 
to provide a familiar 'handle' to those used to the c-like languages.

If Rev is always aimed at being accessible to beginning programmers as a 
foundational principle, I think it is going to be regarded as 
un-professional by IT departments.

One thing I liked in a competing product I looked at a few years ago (I 
can't remember the name now) was that the menu of the IDE had an option 
for selecting the complexity of the view - something like 'simple', 
'detailed', 'advanced'.  As it started up in 'simple' mode, it was very 
easy to get an initial overview without being overwhelmed.  Once I had 
grasped the essence of what it could do, I could change the complexity of 
the IDE to increase my understanding - moving up the complexity levels 
revealed its power.  I think if Metacard had had this facility 5 years 
ago, I would have used it 4 years earlier :-)

Whenever one is learning a powerful and complex new environment, I think 
it is advantageous to be able to start it in 'simple mode', and let the 
user switch to the level that they feel comfortable with.  Professionals 
could start it up, select 'advanced' to see a complex environment.  Maybe 
the docs could also be sensitive to the complexity level and provide 
c-syntax. 

Just my 2pence

Bernard.
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Frank Leahy]

Not supporting these standard statements make the language look a
bit "beginner-ish"
Frank, et al:

Is there something inherently inferior about a programming
environment that can be used productively by someone who doesn't have
a degree in computer science?
Do professional developers feel threatened by the concept of business
people writing custom software to drive their business without
employing a programmer to assist or do the job for them?
Rob,

I was writing system software at Apple -- every time you use pop up, 
color, or hierarchical menu on the Mac you can thank me -- when 
HyperCard was developed, and I knew both Bill Atkinson (invented 
HyperCard) and Dan Winkler (invented HyperTalk).

I wrote one of the first large-scale end-user applications in HyperCard 
-- see http://www.artstacks.com/ -- which is still used by over 300 
high-end art galleries around the world.

There is nothing inferior about a programming language or a development 
environment that makes it easier for non-computer scientists to program.

I have no problem with people using RR for any project they want to 
create.  The more the merrier.

I love that xTalk makes RR accessible to the masses.

BUT...I wish xTalk had some ADDITIONAL constructs that made it more 
accessible to computer scientists and professional programmers.  Both 
because without them xTalk look amateurish, and therefore less likely 
to be used by professionals, and because it would make it significantly 
easier to port code from other languages to xTalk.

It's that simple.  This isn't an either or proposition.  Adding support 
for "x = 1" would have no impact on the RR IDE. It would have no impact 
on your ability to use "put 1 into x" all you want.  It would have no 
impact on you, or anyone else using RR today.  But it would make my 
life easier.  And, I believe, it would make RR an easier sell into 
organizations staffed by professional programmers and 
computer-scientists.

Thanks for listening.

-- Frank

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[jbv]

Rob Cozens a *crit :

> Is there something inherently inferior about a programming
> environment that can be used productively by someone who doesn't have
> a degree in computer science?
>
> Do professional developers feel threatened by the concept of business
> people writing custom software to drive their business without
> employing a programmer to assist or do the job for them?
>
> As a professional with 30 years in the field, I am IMPRESSED that
> people like local MUG HyperCard SIG member, Carl Chaney, could write
> functional work order processing, invoicing, & tax reconciliation
> software for his laser engraving business and a point of sale system
> for his daughter's ice cream parlor in HyperTalk without taking one
> programming course and without even any experience using a
> spreadsheet.  Sure his work looked "beginner-ish"; BUT IT DID THE JOB
> HE WANTED DONE.
>
> Does the fact that Carl Chaney could do that in X-Talk, does that
> mean, a priori, that X-Talk is an inferior development environment?

Well, although these are serious questions raising interesting problems,
IMHO
they don't fully cover the topic...

No doubt that HC (and especially the Xtalk syntax) was developped by
Apple
in the same "plug & play" and "user friendly" spirit as the Macintosh.
But having a prog. tool allowing to code in a syntax closed to natural
english
doesn't prevent to learn such concepts as variables (local vs global),
loops,
arrays, functions, handlers, sending messages, passing parameters, etc.
All of those being typical computer science concept. The fact that X-talk

syntax is far less cryptic than C syntax helps a lot in learning those
concepts,
especially because one can focus on the concepts themselves without being

bothered by any cryptic syntax.
But OTOH I've seen several custom projects developped with HC or OMO
by non professional programmers : although these projects did (more or
less)
their work, they were totally awfull from a prof. point of view, mostly
because
it was clear that the above mentioned basic concepts hadn't been totally
understood
by the ppl who developped them, and often they had made choices and
written
code that was totally ridiculous, slow, uselessly complicated...
And if any of these projects had to be maintained or extended by someone
else,
the task was almost impossible, and it would be easier & cheaper to
re-write
everything from scratch.

So the question is rather : to which degree of complexity can a project
be
developped in X-talk by someone without serious computer science bkground
?
To which degree the X-talk syntax isn't only a way to improve
productivity of
ppl with serious computer science knowledge, by allowing them to reach a
greater complexity in their projects in less time and with less lines of
code than,
say, C or Java ?

JB


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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Rob Cozens]

Having "put" as the sole assignment syntax means, IMHO, that people 
looking at RR think it's more like HyperCard than less like HyperCard
Frank, et al:

My apologies if this is a repost.  I originally sent it at 9 AM 
yesterday, and if it appeared on the list, I missed it:


Not supporting these standard statements make the language look a 
bit "beginner-ish"
Frank, et al:

Is there something inherently inferior about a programming 
environment that can be used productively by someone who doesn't have 
a degree in computer science?

Do professional developers feel threatened by the concept of business 
people writing custom software to drive their business without 
employing a programmer to assist or do the job for them?

As a professional with 30 years in the field, I am IMPRESSED that 
people like local MUG HyperCard SIG member, Carl Chaney, could write 
functional work order processing, invoicing, & tax reconciliation 
software for his laser engraving business and a point of sale system 
for his daughter's ice cream parlor in HyperTalk without taking one 
programming course and without even any experience using a 
spreadsheet.  Sure his work looked "beginner-ish"; BUT IT DID THE JOB 
HE WANTED DONE.

Does the fact that Carl Chaney could do that in X-Talk, does that 
mean, a priori, that X-Talk is an inferior development environment?

If programming were illustration and program languages were boxes of 
crayons, my analogy would be:

Give a room full of ordinary people X-Talk crayons, and everyone of 
them will create an illustration.  A ten year old's illustration may 
look less polished than an adult's, which in turn may look less 
polished than a professional illustrator's; but everyone can produce 
something meaningful to them.

Give a room full of ordinary people C crayons, and most won't be able 
to draw a single line.

Which environment is truly "beginner-ish" in terms of software 
development evolution?
--

Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm
"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."
from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Rob Cozens]

 Who wants Rev to be as user-friendly as C?
I'm afraid that's impossible, Judy:  one would have to--

* "dumb down" the Rev Dev UI,

* completely rewrite Transcript to make the syntax as succinct as possible

* "power down" the syntax so it takes half a page of code to 
accomplish what could previously be done in one line

* add support for line end characters (eg: ";") which completely 
change the meaning of a statement when appended to it.

* place programmer's premium on how complicated a command can be 
produced in a minimal token string, preferably incorporating the line 
end character mentioned above & other "C cleverness" to impress one's 
colleagues with the ultimate undecipherable, cryptic statement.

:{`)
--
Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm
"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."
from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Mark Wieder]

As Dar points out here, the "=" operator can easily be overloaded. The
reason that C implements the "==" operator for comparisons is because
C also lets you do something pretty screwy with assignments:

if (c==12) is a comparison between c and 12
if (c=12) assigns 12 to c and then takes the result of the assignment

When C programmers really want to get obscure they will code something
like

if (c = getvalue() == getstring())

As long as this syntax isn't allowed in Transcript, then there
shouldn't be a problem with supporting both

put 12 into c
and
c = 12

-- 
-Mark Wieder
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[David Vaughan]

On 10/02/2004, at 14:13, Dar Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Maybe this applies to the old single character not-equals, which I 
think is still allowed in Revolution.
It is allowed on Mac but if you write that code it will fail when you 
try to distribute to Win, as I discovered. The distribution is 
apparently built successfully but the code does not work. I used to 
think ≠ [that was the mac single-character not-equals for other users] 
was cute but now I write only "<>".

regards
David
Dar Scott
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[tuviah snyder]

>And my bet still stands -- I'm willing to bet $20 that the code to
>parse "x = 1" is already in place, but commented out in the RR engine
>for historical reasons.
You can email me offlist to arrange payment:-)

The problem with x = 1, is that it breaks a main rule in xtalk in that every
statement starts with a command/verb (GET,SET,PUT).

Tuviah

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[tuviah snyder]

>(And BTW, if you've ever written a parser you know that
>adding support for this is trivial, and it will have zero impact on
>runtime performance.)
Then why not support JavaScript as an additional syntax to XTalk, at least
that way it will be consistant. It's not all that difficult either
http://www.mozilla.org/js/spidermonkey/

OSA supports multiple languages, so does .NET, and HyperCard used to support
Applescript. It is the framework, the easy way that you can write an app in
a few minutes with a familier easy to use visual object model that matters
like Doug said.

These languages are just tools and some people find some tools easier than
others. Personally I would rather support JavaScript and call it JavaScript
then impact the readability of the XTalk language for others. AFAIK
Macromedia didn't scrap lingo but added support for Javascript.

There are many things that can be added to improve the transcript language
and I'm all for it but prefer to discuss on the improve-list or a list set
up like the old XTalk list.

Tuviah

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dar Scott]

On Monday, February 9, 2004, at 06:08 PM, Frank Leahy wrote:

I said ADD support for "x = 1" as AN ALTERNATIVE to "put" -- you get 
to decide which you use.
Rats, I'm dragging this on after Frank is trying to bow out.

One of the problems with an alternative is that those reading the 
script do not have the alternative.

If my keyboard could handle it well, I'd rather use math notation much 
like ^ and v for 'and' and 'or'.  And despite my claims that it is 
"standard" math, others might think them pretentious or techy or adding 
complication to the language.

My comment is not so much aimed at Frank's ideas; he is bowing out.  It 
is that the discussion has put some of my thinking in another light.

Maybe this applies to the old single character not-equals, which I 
think is still allowed in Revolution.

Dar Scott

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Doug Lerner]

On 2/10/04 10:20 AM, "Dar Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> On Monday, February 9, 2004, at 06:08 PM, Doug Lerner wrote:
> 
>> thatStack.thisCard.button:thisButton.hilite = true
> 
> Most of my object names are multiple words.  Would that be handled like
> this?
> 
> stack:"Blueberry Martians".card:"Surface
> Ambulance".button:"Simulate Roll".hilite = true
> 
> Could something like this be done?
> 
> stack:getBestStack().card:savedCard().button:1.hilite = true

It's looking more complicated than the current transcript method. :)

doug

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dar Scott]

On Monday, February 9, 2004, at 06:33 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

Frank Leahy wrote:

And my bet still stands -- I'm willing to bet $20 that the code to
parse "x = 1" is already in place, but commented out in the RR engine
for historical reasons.
You may have just lost $20: "=" is already an operator in Transcript 
(used
as in Pascal, for comparison).

When cavemen first invented programming languages, the big moment of 
d'oh!
was after they'd proudly implemted "=" as an assignment operator only 
to
realize they'd forgotten comparison.
But to be fair, as pointed out, the = can be overloaded here.

In C every statement is an expression, so there is a problem, but in 
context in some similar language, = can mean two things.

Dar Scott

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[tuviah snyder]

>If Transcript were to look just like C et al, what would be its
>comparative advantage??
>Show of hands:  Who wants Rev to be as user-friendly as C?
maybe this is what they were looking for http://www.softintegration.com/

Tuviah

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Richard Gaskin]

Frank Leahy wrote:

> And my bet still stands -- I'm willing to bet $20 that the code to
> parse "x = 1" is already in place, but commented out in the RR engine
> for historical reasons.

You may have just lost $20: "=" is already an operator in Transcript (used
as in Pascal, for comparison).

When cavemen first invented programming languages, the big moment of d'oh!
was after they'd proudly implemted "=" as an assignment operator only to
realize they'd forgotten comparison.  Rather than check their premise, they
went the other direction and required two characters, since all the cool
single-character operators had been used.   So now "equals" means "put" and
"put put" means "equals".

:)

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dar Scott]

On Monday, February 9, 2004, at 06:08 PM, Doug Lerner wrote:

thatStack.thisCard.button:thisButton.hilite = true
Most of my object names are multiple words.  Would that be handled like 
this?

 stack:"Blueberry Martians".card:"Surface 
Ambulance".button:"Simulate Roll".hilite = true

Could something like this be done?

 stack:getBestStack().card:savedCard().button:1.hilite = true

Dar Scott

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Richard Gaskin]

Judy Perry wrote:

> As I've spent a good chunk of time reading some of these, it would seem
> that novice programmers try to 'memorize' indeed, but lack comprehension
> as traditional programming languages involve using the 'black box' model
> of a computer, whereas scripting languages, code reuse and the like
> support actual comprehension because the computer is now a 'clear box' in
> which the programmer's actions are translated into concrete and
> comprehensible outcomes.  This assists transfer.
> 
> Expert programmers engage in pattern-recognition in that they do not need
> to study each line of code and understand it sequentially in debugging but
> rather look for a predictable pattern that is either present or absent and
> which jumps out at them.
> 
> I can supply references if anyone's interested...
> 
> Judy

That was a way cool post.  Yes, links please.  Sounds like good reading.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Doug Lerner]

On 2/10/04 9:52 AM, "Dar Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> On Monday, February 9, 2004, at 05:43 PM, Doug Lerner wrote:
> 
>> thisStudent.age + thatStudent.age
> 
> thisStudent["age"] + thatStudent["age"]
> 
> ...is admittedly 6 characters over yours.

Yes, associative arrays are essentially properties. In JavaScript you could
actually write it either way. Usually the way you wrote it would be used if
the property name itself were a dynamic value.

But what about a similar notation for

set the hilite of button "thisButton" of card "thisCard" of stack
"thatStack" to true

Something like

thatStack.thisCard.button:thisButton.hilite = true

might be convenient...

doug

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Frank Leahy]

On Tuesday, February 10, 2004, at 12:31  AM, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Frank Leahy wrote:
Disagreeing right back at you.  If you want professionals to use Rev,
then you need standard assignment statement syntax -- without them
Revolution looks like a hobbyist language rather than a real working
language ("oh, it's just HyperTalk, and we all know that wasn't a
'real' language/development environment")  And since it's perfectly
possible to support "x = 1" without affecting the current "put" and
"set" statements, I would argue that they should consider adding it.
If Transcript were to look just like C et al, what would be its
comparative advantage??
Show of hands:  Who wants Rev to be as user-friendly as C?

Judy
Judy,

You are about the 15th person who didn't read what I wrote (I'm picking 
on you because your message is so short and succinct, thanks).

I suggested ADDING an assignment operator syntax that is commonly used 
in essentially every other modern computer language, and that has its 
basis in mathematical notation.  I didn't say GET RID OF the current 
"put" syntax or GET RID OF any other xTalk construct -- I said ADD 
support for "x = 1" as AN ALTERNATIVE to "put" -- you get to decide 
which you use.  (And BTW, if you've ever written a parser you know that 
adding support for this is trivial, and it will have zero impact on 
runtime performance.)

Now, for those who have forgotten why I suggested this in the first 
place, it was in response to comments about how professional or 
un-professional RR appears to those taking a look at it for the first 
time.  Having "put" as the sole assignment syntax means, IMHO, that 
people looking at RR think it's more like HyperCard than less like 
HyperCard, when in fact it's a lot less like HyperCard.

There is one other good reason why this syntax should be supported, 
because it's a really big pain in the a-- to port algorithms written in 
other languages to RR.  I'm porting some code that parses the JPEG EXIF 
header, and I have to rewrite every frickin' statement from "x += y + 
2" to "put x + y + 2 into x".

But let's stop this discussion, ok?  No one from RR has piped up to 
suggest that they're even considering such a change, so the discussion 
is moot.

And my bet still stands -- I'm willing to bet $20 that the code to 
parse "x = 1" is already in place, but commented out in the RR engine 
for historical reasons.

-- Frank

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Judy Perry]

On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Frank Leahy wrote:
>
> Disagreeing right back at you.  If you want professionals to use Rev,
> then you need standard assignment statement syntax -- without them
> Revolution looks like a hobbyist language rather than a real working
> language ("oh, it's just HyperTalk, and we all know that wasn't a
> 'real' language/development environment")  And since it's perfectly
> possible to support "x = 1" without affecting the current "put" and
> "set" statements, I would argue that they should consider adding it.

If Transcript were to look just like C et al, what would be its
comparative advantage??

Show of hands:  Who wants Rev to be as user-friendly as C?

Judy

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dar Scott]

On Monday, February 9, 2004, at 03:34 AM, Frank Leahy wrote:

I think you're confusing the language (xTalk), with the development 
and runtime environment (call it HyperCard++ for the moment).  
HyperCard++ is a Rapid Application Development environment that uses 
the concepts of stacks, cards and controls to make it relatively easy 
to build complex multi-window applications.  xTalk, the language that 
is used to control this RAD, is a HyperTalk clone, but could 
(theoretically) be replaced with any number of other languages, e.g. 
C, JavaScript, VB, PHP, etc.
This is true.  I'd still be here if the language was graphical like 
that in LabView or was simple and powerful like Scheme.

Whatever language used should fit in and respect the environment of 
stacks and cards and controls and such.  There should be a synergy of 
some sort.

I often found in scripting that I wanted to switch to math notation 
(such as sigma), to embed tables to behave as functions and predicates, 
and to include unicode characters in line.

I like the naive view of values in Transcript.  I realize that it has 
some rough edges, but to the extent that it can keep concepts simple, 
that is good.

I suspect that as Transcript grows, it need not copy C or C++ or even 
Java, but can grow with rich abstractions and leave those in the dust.

Dar Scott

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (was Andy's comments and positioning...)

[Geoff Canyon]

I once heard that AppleScript was localizable into other languages -- 
French, I think. I even heard that they produced, but never released, a 
"C" dialect of AppleScript to make the "serious" programmers happy. ;-)

regards,

Geoff Canyon
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Feb 8, 2004, at 3:09 PM, Stephen Quinn Barncard wrote:

I imagine it would be a nightmare to 'localize' the syntax to French, 
Germanand prone to more bugs... it's human nature...


Though I like the syntax for my own use and for teaching "junior 
associates" (it does help), I think the English orientation might be 
somewhat of a weakness in an global sense.  I don't really know and I 
don't think I'm much of a judge.

Dar Scott
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Thomas McGrath III]

I like xObject as a name. Sort of an 'xTalk' based upon object models 
for RAD.
I only think of stack, card and controls as objects anyway. I don't 
even 'get' the metaphor anymore. Of course, I don't 'get' the stage, 
players either. I mean deep in my mind when I am planning a new project 
I don't see stacks and cards or stages and players. I see windows with 
elements that need to be there or need to change and what do I need 
them to 'do'.

rambling...

Tom

On Feb 9, 2004, at 5:34 AM, Frank Leahy wrote:

 HyperCard++ is a Rapid Application Development environment that uses 
the concepts of stacks, cards and controls to make it relatively easy 
to build complex multi-window applications.  xTalk, the language that 
is used to control this RAD, is a HyperTalk clone, but could 
(theoretically) be replaced with any number of other languages, e.g. 
C, JavaScript, VB, PHP, etc.

Thomas J. McGrath III
SCS
1000 Killarney Dr.
Pittsburgh, PA 15234
412-885-8541
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Jim Hurley]

I english orientation language of RunRev love.

Jim
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dom]

Doug Lerner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I think that's what started the thread. Not all developers around the world
> think in English-like terms.  :)

You are wrong. In spite of my sig, when I am scripting I think directly
in pig-english ;-)

In fact, I am almost speaking in my head while typing -- but I'd prefer
there is not native speaker to hear me at this moment ;-)))

-- 
Vous parlez français ? faites un tour sur le groupe francophone !
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[jbv]

Doug Lerner a *crit :

> On 2/9/04 4:31 PM, "Thomas McGrath III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > With REV I 'think' about what I want in english
> > like terms and then start typing.
>
> I think that's what started the thread. Not all developers around the world
> think in English-like terms.  :)
>

AFAIR some studies in experimental psychology & ergonomics in the
early 80's showed that beginners & experimented programmers think
and mostly memorize algorithms in very different ways :
- beginners tend to memorize an algo in a specific prog. language
- experienced programmers memorize algos outside any prog. language

I don't know if this remark is on or off topic, although according to these
studies, one might assume that experienced programmers from different
countries and with different native languages (USA, french, japanese...)
don't bother much about the language used to code, but focus on the
algorithm itself and perhaps think about (analyze & solve) a problem in
a similar way...

JB

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Pierre Sahores]

Le 9 févr. 04, à 08:34, Doug Lerner a écrit :

On 2/9/04 4:31 PM, "Thomas McGrath III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

With REV I 'think' about what I want in english
like terms and then start typing.


I think that's what started the thread. Not all developers around the 
world
think in English-like terms.  :)
Probably, they should ;-) Are the C, Java, PHP or Perl langages  less 
English-oriented than Transcript is (aka: more french or spanish 
friendy) ?
doug

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Bien cordialement, Pierre Sahores

100, rue de Paris
F - 77140 Nemours
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RE: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Frank Leahy]

On Monday, February 9, 2004, at 07:44  AM, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Frank,

If you want dot notation and equals signs, why wouldn't you just use 
C, or
VB or Java or any ohter authoring language which has those? That's what
*they do*. At some point, adding same syntax ends up creating same
functionality.

The fact is that the X-talks *are not like those other languages*. 
That's
what many of us actually like about Transcript.
Hi Chipp,

I think you're confusing the language (xTalk), with the development and 
runtime environment (call it HyperCard++ for the moment).  HyperCard++ 
is a Rapid Application Development environment that uses the concepts 
of stacks, cards and controls to make it relatively easy to build 
complex multi-window applications.  xTalk, the language that is used to 
control this RAD, is a HyperTalk clone, but could (theoretically) be 
replaced with any number of other languages, e.g. C, JavaScript, VB, 
PHP, etc.

I like the RAD, and I don't want to replace xTalk -- my original 
comment, that it would be nice if I could write "x = y + z" would mean 
adding a very small amount of "syntactic sugar" to xTalk, and would go 
a long way towards making xTalk look more a "real" language.

RR has limited resources for modifying all of the many compiles of 
engines
it supports. My vote is they concentrate on adding features and fixing 
bugs,
rather than supporting multiple syntaxes.
I agree about wasting precious resources.  But I'd be willing to bet 
that "x = 1 + 2" is already supported in the parser, and is commented 
out for historical reasons.  It would be interesting if a RunRev person 
could confirm or deny this :-)

Best,
-- Frank
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (was Andy'scomments and positioning...)

[Dom]

Kjetil Rå Hauge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Applescript already has  French  

No more. And it's *good* ;-)
The french version ws plagued with a number of bugs...
It was funny to play "Babelfish" with it (fr > en > fr) ;-)))

As a french speaker, I am *not*  disturbed by having to write scripts in
a sort of pig english [as I am doing now to explain myself ;->]

That's a part of scripting/programing for me...

> and Japanese variants of its English-like syntax, I believe. But would it
> make learning easier for Japanese and Turkish programmers if the
> programming language syntax was closer to the constituent order (aka word
> order) of their native language? I am not sure.

I am sort of biased, as I studied _written_ english at school for years:
I don't think it would make learning easier... maybe for youngsters?
But young people are showered with english-speaking songs [that they
fortunately don't understand ;->], so they are already accustomed to
english...

-- 
Vous parlez français ? faites un tour sur le groupe francophone !
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Doug Lerner]

On 2/9/04 4:31 PM, "Thomas McGrath III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> With REV I 'think' about what I want in english
> like terms and then start typing.


I think that's what started the thread. Not all developers around the world
think in English-like terms.  :)

doug

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Thomas McGrath III]

I agree with you Chipp.

I turned down a job doing a Director project and instead talked them 
into doing it in REV because I KNEW I could get it done quicker and in 
the short time frame they needed. Now D does have its points but XTalk 
just works better for these type of projects for me. I can Talk my way 
through what it is I want to do and then just do it.
 I don't mind dot syntax as an option but mostly prefer xtalk.

Since REV is so powerful and fast and easy to use I would rather see it 
given a few more vital features and some of those bugs cleaned out 
before even thinking about other syntax being added to the pie.

I was able to buy, learn and distribute a major CD project in only a 
couple of months and do it with certainty only because of Rev's 
transcript being what i expected an xtalk to be. Heck and no manuals 
either. I have 12 Director manuals and still spend way too much time 
looking stuff up in it. With REV I 'think' about what I want in english 
like terms and then start typing. Oh sure there are some weird things 
to get used to but that's the same across the board.

Fwiw

Tom

On Feb 9, 2004, at 2:18 AM, Chipp Walters wrote:

Frank,

If you want dot notation and equals signs, why wouldn't you just use 
C, or
VB or Java or any ohter authoring language which has those? That's what
*they do*. At some point, adding same syntax ends up creating same
functionality.

The fact is that the X-talks *are not like those other languages*. 
That's
what many of us actually like about Transcript.

When I switched to RR from VB a couple of years ago, I had a few script
errors like:
x=2 instead of put 2 into x

but, sooner than later...I ended up figuring it out. I expect others 
do too.

Anytime a person takes on a new language, be it Transcript, LISP, 
Perl, PHP,
SQL, ASP, VB, C, C++, C#, Java (on an on) they end up 'learning a new
language.' It's now a requisite for modern developers to be facile in 
their
ability to learn new languages.

RR has limited resources for modifying all of the many compiles of 
engines
it supports. My vote is they concentrate on adding features and fixing 
bugs,
rather than supporting multiple syntaxes.

best,

Chipp

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1000 Killarney Dr.
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412-885-8541
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RE: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Chipp Walters]

Frank,

If you want dot notation and equals signs, why wouldn't you just use C, or
VB or Java or any ohter authoring language which has those? That's what
*they do*. At some point, adding same syntax ends up creating same
functionality.

The fact is that the X-talks *are not like those other languages*. That's
what many of us actually like about Transcript.

When I switched to RR from VB a couple of years ago, I had a few script
errors like:

x=2 instead of put 2 into x

but, sooner than later...I ended up figuring it out. I expect others do too.

Anytime a person takes on a new language, be it Transcript, LISP, Perl, PHP,
SQL, ASP, VB, C, C++, C#, Java (on an on) they end up 'learning a new
language.' It's now a requisite for modern developers to be facile in their
ability to learn new languages.

RR has limited resources for modifying all of the many compiles of engines
it supports. My vote is they concentrate on adding features and fixing bugs,
rather than supporting multiple syntaxes.

best,

Chipp


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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Dar Scott]

on soapbox

On Sunday, February 8, 2004, at 07:29 PM, Frank Leahy wrote:

>Removing exceptions can simplify xTalk and enhance its power.

You mean try/catch/end try?  It might simplify things, but it sure 
won't enhance anybody's power.  There are numerous places that common 
functions can fail in xTalk (e.g. set the fileName of an image to an 
alias file -- oops)  Since xTalk has no consistent failure reporting 
mechanism, exceptions are really the only reasonable way to handle 
exceptional conditions without having tons of if statements littered 
throughout your code. (What, you mean you don't handle error 
conditions?  Shame on you :-)
My error.  Wrong word.

I mean all the places where the semantics has an "except" or "but not" 
or "is limited to" or "must already" or similar.

For example, a key in an array cannot contain a NUL character.  Also, 
the second delimiter of combine cannot be NUL.  (The TD also disallows 
others.)

Can I use an expression for a property name?  Is the answer yes, no or 
'um, that's a little complicated'?

I do use 'try', even though I write perfect code.  ;-)  Of 'catch' and 
'finally' can you remember which ones are optional and which ones are 
required?

You can use an array variable as an parameter in a function 
application.  You can even return it as the value of the function if it 
is put directly into a variable.  But you cannot return an array from a 
function application that is an expression that is a parameter for 
another function.  eg:  put fixArray( fixArray( arrayX ) ) into arrayY

If I 'put 2 into x', the variable x might be made for me, but 
matchText() and decodeBinary() (according to the TD) need the variables 
to be already created.

This goes on and on.

Dar Scott

end soapbox

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Frank Leahy]

On Monday, February 9, 2004, at 01:45  AM, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Of course with Transcript, the = operator means the same thing that 
the ==
operator means in other languages. That probably can't be changed 
anymore or
everything wouldn't be backwards compatible. So some other kind of
assignment operator would be needed like
A parser works by looking for "tokens", such as "put" or "set" or "if". 
 When the parser sees the "if" token, it could decide that the "=" 
between the "if" and the "then" is a comparison operator (as opposed to 
an assignment operator).  Similarly, when the parser sees "x = 1 + 2" 
at the beginning of a line, it could recognize this = as meaning 
assignment (as opposed to comparison).

In other words, there's no reason these two couldn't be defined to be 
identical in xTalk:

if a = b then
  put 1 into x
end if
if a = b then
  x = 1
end if
(this latter is the same in VB, for example)

> Some languages overload = to mean 'defined as' in some contexts and
>'equals' in others.  Mathematics is in the same situation and some
>folks use a different symbol to mean 'defined as'.
>
>Dar Scott
See the note above -- the context can be used to tell the parser 
whether = means assignment or comparison.

>Yes, but *only* if it allows both syntaxes. Over the years that I've
> watched languages evolve, they too often leave a syntax behind as they
> evolve to a new one. Dot notation isn't hard to learn, but it, again,
The first versions of Lingo (Director), which was quite similar to 
HyperTalk, supported both "put" and assignment = syntax, so you could 
write either "put 1 into x" or "x = 1".  There's no reason xTalk 
couldn't do the same.

> x = y + z (instead of put y + z into x)
> x += 1 (instead of add 1 to x)
> x.myProperty = foo (instead of set myProperty of x to foo)"
>
> Sorry, Frank, but I just flat disagree. Those syntaxes -- in 
particular
> the far-too-cryptic and unreadably annoying "x += 1" -- are 
off-putting
> to all but professional programmers with backgrounds in C/C++/Java. 
And

Disagreeing right back at you.  If you want professionals to use Rev, 
then you need standard assignment statement syntax -- without them 
Revolution looks like a hobbyist language rather than a real working 
language ("oh, it's just HyperTalk, and we all know that wasn't a 
'real' language/development environment")  And since it's perfectly 
possible to support "x = 1" without affecting the current "put" and 
"set" statements, I would argue that they should consider adding it.

[changing topics]

>Removing exceptions can simplify xTalk and enhance its power.

You mean try/catch/end try?  It might simplify things, but it sure 
won't enhance anybody's power.  There are numerous places that common 
functions can fail in xTalk (e.g. set the fileName of an image to an 
alias file -- oops)  Since xTalk has no consistent failure reporting 
mechanism, exceptions are really the only reasonable way to handle 
exceptional conditions without having tons of if statements littered 
throughout your code. (What, you mean you don't handle error 
conditions?  Shame on you :-)

>For example, if 'f()' is a built-in function then we can apply it as
>'f()' or 'the f'.  By why limit this to built-in?  Why not allow this
> for custom functions, too?
I'd second this idea as well.

-- Frank



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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (wasAndy'scomments and positioning...)

[Doug Lerner]

On 2/9/04 9:07 AM, "Dar Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> On Sunday, February 8, 2004, at 04:07 PM, Doug Lerner wrote:
> 
>> It would be nice to also support a JavaScript-like:
>> 
>> b.a = c
> 
> What could be a concrete example?
> 
> (field "Potatoes Required").textHeight = 20
> 
> Or like this?
> 
> field("Potatoes Required).textHeight = 20
> 
> Just wondering.
> 
> (this stack).textHeight =20
>

I think parentheses around the entire expression is more consistent with
other languages. For example, in JavaScript you would create a new date
object with

new Date()

You might get just the 4-digit year with

now = new Date();
year = now.getFullYear();

or you might just do it in one step like:

year = (new Date()).getFullYear();

Of course with Transcript, the = operator means the same thing that the ==
operator means in other languages. That probably can't be changed anymore or
everything wouldn't be backwards compatible. So some other kind of
assignment operator would be needed like

b.a := c (looks like an arrow pointing to the left)

doug


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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (was Andy'scomments and positioning...)

[Dar Scott]

On Sunday, February 8, 2004, at 04:07 PM, Doug Lerner wrote:

It would be nice to also support a JavaScript-like:

b.a = c
What could be a concrete example?

(field "Potatoes Required").textHeight = 20

Or like this?

field("Potatoes Required).textHeight = 20

Just wondering.

(this stack).textHeight =20

Dar Scott

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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (was Andy'scomments and positioning...)

[Kjetil Rå Hauge]

On 2/9/04 8:02 AM, "Dar Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I was wonder that myself. If you were going to write for, say, Japanese
users, instead of
set the a of b to c

you would say

b no a wo c ni settei

The grammar is practically opposite.

It would be nice to also support a JavaScript-like:

b.a = c

notation

Fascinating. Let's compare with Turkish:

set the a of b to c
Japanese:

b no a wo c ni settei
Turkish:

b'nžn a'sž c olacak/olur/olmalž/olsun -- or whatever

It would be nice to also support a JavaScript-like:

b.a = c

... while the Turkish would support

b.a c =

.. which is, if I am not mistaken, reminiscent of 
"Polish notation" in logics. Applescript already 
has  French  and Japanese variants of its 
English-like syntax, I believe. But would it make 
learning easier for Japanese and Turkish 
programmers if the programming language syntax 
was closer to the constituent order (aka word 
order) of their native language? I am not sure. 
Most Germans write English quite well without the 
verb at the end of the sentence to put, don't 
they?
--
--- Kjetil Rå Hauge, U. of Oslo. Tel. +47/22856710, fax +47/22854140
--- (this msg sent from home, +47/67148424, fax +1/5084372444)
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (was Andy's comments and positioning...)

[Stephen Quinn Barncard]

I imagine it would be a nightmare to 'localize' the syntax to French, 
Germanand prone to more bugs... it's human nature...


Though I like the syntax for my own use and for teaching "junior 
associates" (it does help), I think the English orientation might be 
somewhat of a weakness in an global sense.  I don't really know and 
I don't think I'm much of a judge.

Dar Scott
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Re: Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (was Andy'scomments and positioning...)

[Doug Lerner]

On 2/9/04 8:02 AM, "Dar Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> On Sunday, February 8, 2004, at 04:11 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
>> - for non-english-speaking students, today, the "javascript" syntax =
>> the "flash" syntax = the "." syntax = the "ECMA" syntax = "the
>> standard syntax for programming" = is not more difficult than the
>> xtalk syntax.
>> It is the same to teach and to learn "the property of myObjetc" than
>> "myObject.property". The argument xTalk is easy was true 10 years ago,
>> no more today.
>> I am sure of that even for 12-15 years french speaking kids ; i do not
>> know for english-speaking kids.
> 
> In responding to Freak L.'s suggestion, I had ignored this.
> 
> If I read Claude's comments right, the English-like syntax adds
> nothing.  This stops short of saying it gets in the way.
> 
> Though I like the syntax for my own use and for teaching "junior
> associates" (it does help), I think the English orientation might be
> somewhat of a weakness in an global sense.  I don't really know and I
> don't think I'm much of a judge.
> 
> Dar Scott

I was wonder that myself. If you were going to write for, say, Japanese
users, instead of 

set the a of b to c

you would say

b no a wo c ni settei

The grammar is practically opposite.

It would be nice to also support a JavaScript-like:

b.a = c

notation

doug

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Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus? (was Andy's comments and positioning...)

[Dar Scott]

On Sunday, February 8, 2004, at 04:11 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

- for non-english-speaking students, today, the "javascript" syntax = 
the "flash" syntax = the "." syntax = the "ECMA" syntax = "the 
standard syntax for programming" = is not more difficult than the 
xtalk syntax.
It is the same to teach and to learn "the property of myObjetc" than 
"myObject.property". The argument xTalk is easy was true 10 years ago, 
no more today.
I am sure of that even for 12-15 years french speaking kids ; i do not 
know for english-speaking kids.
In responding to Freak L.'s suggestion, I had ignored this.

If I read Claude's comments right, the English-like syntax adds 
nothing.  This stops short of saying it gets in the way.

Though I like the syntax for my own use and for teaching "junior 
associates" (it does help), I think the English orientation might be 
somewhat of a weakness in an global sense.  I don't really know and I 
don't think I'm much of a judge.

Dar Scott

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