Re: Scripting in Gnome

[jamie <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 19:00, John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
> 
> Hold on there.  Perl and Python are typeless languages (even more so
> than VBA which requires you DIM and REDIM your variables).  If you look
> at the python core it is simple sporting only a handful keywords to
> handle looping, class constructs, variables, etc.  VBA is much more
> complicated in that respect.   You are way off base if you think that
> Python is somehow heavier than JavaScript or VBA.  It may contain a lot
> more support libraries but like I said those are optional.  

Thats fine - u can create an xml definition for a cut down version of
perl and python then and use it for scripting in my proposal.


> > Mono will never become an *official* part of Gnome due to politics (SUN
> > would go ape sh1t if it happened).
> SUN doesn't run Gnome.  No company runs it.  Even if it doesn't become
> part of official Gnome if it does what you want it to do why are you
> complaining?  More than likely Ximian will integrate it with their
> desktop at which point you may be able to use it to extend the desktop. 
> Since we are not talking about extending the desktop for other to use
> but to make it easy for to customize your own there is no problem there.

Sun has said that mono will never find its way into Solaris. Indeed
anything that competes with Java is off its agenda. SUn is the third
biggest contributor to Gnome. The scripting facility should be part of
the core Gnome setup if it is going to be used IMO.


> 
> That is what Python/LUA/Ruby/Perl are for.  In fact Python is just a
> GLUE language with extremely easy to write C bindings.  Your idea of a
> full featured vs. application specific language really seem based on
> some internal fear of languages that are flexible and robust.  In fact I
> believe you can even embed python into your application.  Or even use it
> to write Java apps :-)

Well we dont need OO for example. I dont have anything against python or
perl and they can be used in my proposal in a cut down form. 

I cant see a generic script engine being used that depends on every
existing interpreter being installed on the user's system, can u?

Can u imagine how silly a generic script engine would be if ur
wordprocessor used Ruby and ur spreadsheet used Camel etc etc and u had
to install all these languages just to run the stuff.

My proposal means no dependencies on any other language therefore if a
word processor u r using uses, say, a python language in my script
engine then u would not need python installed (likewise with Perl and
every other language). No or minimal dependancies is a very good thing
to have.



> 

> There have been a number of attempts to clone VB.  All of which have not
> taken off.  If you want to look to compatibility I would look to Mono. 
> VB might be different but by the time you had a VBA clone Excel will
> have transfered completely to VB.Net.

.net is a long way off from being a success - only time will tell. I
doubt Excel would use VB.net instead of VBA cause of backwards
compatibility.

> 
> --
> J5