Re: My Entry for the RR Wish List
Since it seems to be the vertical platform-specific stuff where we need the most help, it may bring us the biggest bang for the buck to have some means of making OS calls directly in the language. We'd have to type our vars, but that's a small price to pay for all that flexibility. Richard, et al: If it is not a major undertaking, it would be the preferred approach. I was trying to leverage the concept by suggesting it could be a source of additional revenue to MC/RR Inc. rather than additional cost to be amortized by MC/RR sales. On the surface it seems only to require variable typing (including support for handles pointers), ability to build extract info from system parameter packets, and a built-in knowledge of the number and type of arguments for each system call (a la CompileIt's built-in libraries and/or buildable by the developer). Rob Cozens CCW, Serendipity Software Company 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) ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: My Entry for the RR Wish List
on 2/22/02 4:35 PM, David Vaughan at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Saturday, February 23, 2002, at 04:23 , Rob Cozens wrote: snip Before Revolution, CompileIt was my second-most important application behind HyperCard. snip However, it appears from the List traffic that many people still find the need for externals. I would be willing to pay a seperate license fee for a tool that would allow me to create externals scripted in Transcript. Rob Cozens, CCW Strong support for this idea from me, Rob -- I'm just a newbie, but I think such support (a compiler using Transcript-like language) would be a great idea for developers, and also, tracking the kinds of externals most used would be a good indicator of what should be created as native support for MC/RR as well. Just my $.02 WORTH. Ken N. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: My Entry for the RR Wish List
Although I voiced support for a CompileIt!-style product, the need is far less than existed in HC, as I continue to learn. While we are floating the idea though, I envisage a separate product from Rev, as was CompileIt! from HC, rather than inbuilt capability. Why? Because no-one should fiddle with handles and pointers without damn-good driving lessons and background knowledge of what it is they are playing with. It would soon turn people off RR if they thought such capability a normal or expected-use part of the product and then crashed and burned as they over-wrote their pointers, failed to manage memory and struggled with low-level debugging. Hardly the RR experience we enjoy. Similarly, Java is productive for its safety features (no pointer access) as much as its cross-platform capability. Rev's avoidance of strong typing is itself a language strategy, appealing to some and not to others. I like the idea, but as an add-on, not a product change, hence my support also for separate licensing for a modest fee. regards David On Sunday, February 24, 2002, at 03:59 , Rob Cozens wrote: Since it seems to be the vertical platform-specific stuff where we need the most help, it may bring us the biggest bang for the buck to have some means of making OS calls directly in the language. We'd have to type our vars, but that's a small price to pay for all that flexibility. Richard, et al: If it is not a major undertaking, it would be the preferred approach. I was trying to leverage the concept by suggesting it could be a source of additional revenue to MC/RR Inc. rather than additional cost to be amortized by MC/RR sales. On the surface it seems only to require variable typing (including support for handles pointers), ability to build extract info from system parameter packets, and a built-in knowledge of the number and type of arguments for each system call (a la CompileIt's built-in libraries and/or buildable by the developer). Rob Cozens CCW, Serendipity Software Company 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) ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
My Entry for the RR Wish List
Hi All, In the aftermath of indulging my impulse to respond to it should only take one line in C, I got to thinking how much CompileIt helped me to expand my HyperTalk applications' capabilities and essentially invoke ToolBox commands functions from within HyperTalk. I took out Danny Goodman's HyperCard Developers Guide and compared the C Pascal externals source code with the CompileIt scripts I wrote to perform the same function or invoke the same ToolBox object. IMFO, in terms of relative programmer efficiency, programming in xTalk/CompileIt is to programming in C as programming in C is to programming in assembler. My frustration with assembler came very quickly when I realized I was typing half a page of instructions to accomplish something I could do in one line of FORTRAN or PL/1. And so it was with C once I learned HyperTalk. Even in Pascal, which I much prefer to C, the overhead involved in writing externals was such I tried to avoid using them. Once I had CompileIt, I was anxious to write my next external, and stopped looking for workarounds to avoid them. Before Revolution, CompileIt was my second-most important application behind HyperCard. MC/RR were designed to minimize the need for externals, and I'm going into my redesign with the goal of eliminating all platform-specific aspects of OenoLog. However, it appears from the List traffic that many people still find the need for externals. I would be willing to pay a seperate license fee for a tool that would allow me to create externals scripted in Transcript. Rob Cozens, CCW Where but America can the person who lost the popular vote become President without a coup? ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: My Entry for the RR Wish List
Boonter Rob Cozens adds these bahl harpins to the tidrick: IMFO, in terms of relative programmer efficiency, programming in xTalk/CompileIt is to programming in C as programming in C is to programming in assembler. My frustration with assembler came very quickly when I realized I was typing half a page of instructions to accomplish something I could do in one line of FORTRAN or PL/1. And so it was with C once I learned HyperTalk. Even in Pascal, which I much prefer to C, the overhead involved in writing externals was such I tried to avoid using them. Once I had CompileIt, I was anxious to write my next external, and stopped looking for workarounds to avoid them. Before Revolution, CompileIt was my second-most important application behind HyperCard. MC/RR were designed to minimize the need for externals, and I'm going into my redesign with the goal of eliminating all platform-specific aspects of OenoLog. However, it appears from the List traffic that many people still find the need for externals. I would be willing to pay a seperate license fee for a tool that would allow me to create externals scripted in Transcript. It would nifty as all get-out, but I'm wondering if there might be a more Toolbook-like solution instead. In Toolbook, the downside of the language is that you must declare variable types. The upside of this is that typing is the biggest obstacle to making direct OS calls. So in Toolbook, with both typed vars and a Rev-like precompilation when a script is closed, you can make calls directly to the Win API. For a project I worked on once we were able to make the equivalent of Mark Hanrek's RadWindows in just three lines of OpenScript. While there are some benefits to true compilation for externals, in my experience the number of cases where such things are needed are relatively few. For example, after porting a few dozen projects, ranging from very simply single-window things like MetaBench (also available as HyperBench and SuperBench at our FTP site) to very complex systems with dozens of windows, hundreds and cards, sub-sub-menus and database access, I've rewritten more than two dozen XCMDs and XFCNs in native Transcript/MetaTalk with no noticeable degradation in performance (measurable, but not subjectively noticeable). The only externals I've ever retained were platform-specific (Tuviah wrote a wonderful backdrop external that let's Windows users retain access to the Start bar, and we use his Text-to-Speech externals in Brian Thomas' upcoming If Monks Had Macs CD), and of course the great Valentina external for access to that nifty DB engine. Everything else, from text processing to specialized dialogs, have all been implemented in native Transcript. Since it seems to be the vertical platform-specific stuff where we need the most help, it may bring us the biggest bang for the buck to have some means of making OS calls directly in the language. We'd have to type our vars, but that's a small price to pay for all that flexibility. Ken Ray's been kicking around some ideas along these lines, and hopefully there's a way to incorporate some if his ideas into a future release. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation Custom Software and Web Development for All Major Platforms Developer of WebMerge 1.9: Publish any Database on Any Site ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com Tel: 323-225-3717 AIM: FourthWorldInc ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: My Entry for the RR Wish List
On Saturday, February 23, 2002, at 04:23 , Rob Cozens wrote: snip Before Revolution, CompileIt was my second-most important application behind HyperCard. snip However, it appears from the List traffic that many people still find the need for externals. I would be willing to pay a seperate license fee for a tool that would allow me to create externals scripted in Transcript. Rob Cozens, CCW Strong support for this idea from me, Rob regards David Where but America can the person who lost the popular vote become President without a coup? ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
