Re: [Texmacs-dev] Could this be interesting for TeXmacs?

[Henri Lesourd]

David Allouche wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 14:34, Henri Lesourd <address@hidden 
> <mailto:address@hidden>> wrote:
>
>     Alvaro Tejero Cantero wrote:
>
>         http://code.google.com/apis/v8/intro.html
>
>
> I cannot see how this is relevant at all to TeXmacs.
Because scripting TeXmacs is a need, and Guile
as a scripting language is definitely driving
many users away from us (I asked).

>     On the other hand, you could think about
>     a more conservative approach, namely,
>     translate the desired scripting languages
>     to Scheme.
>
>
> This is a big deal. IIRC, that was one of the stated initial goal of 
> Scheme. And I am not aware that anything happened in this direction. 

No, nothing happened in this direction, but perhaps
there are reasons for this.


>     Especially: Python and Javascript should
>     be considered. Python because the combination
>     C/C++ plus Python is the approach of choice
>     when people need to perform resource intensive
>     scientific calculations (e.g. simulations).
>
>
> It would be more sensible to port TeXmacs to another scripting language.

Then you remain in a situation where there is only one language.

> This would avoid a dramatic increase in the overall complexity of the 
> system.

You have to avoid this, that's right.


>     This being said, I don't know when the
>     resources will be available for tackling
>     such tasks...
>
>
> In my completely irrelevant opinion, it would be a much much better 
> idea to fix the user interface.
Yes, but this is orthogonal (except from the point of view
of available resources ;-(, of course...).

> If any work should be done on the scripting aspect, it should rather 
> focus on adding an automated test suite

This would be useful, for sure.

> and either documenting or removing metalinguistic complexity such as 
> the DRD system.

The problem is that without the DRD system, there are things
one cannot do, thus you cannot just drop it like that.