Re: [screen-devel] Scripting Support for Screen

[Trent W. Buck]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 06:11:33PM +0200, Johannes Weiner wrote:
>> * What about the bloat?
> Screw the bloat, there are larger full-blown window managers around :-)

I don't think that the existence of bloat in *some* solutions for an
unrelated problem domain is an excuse to add bloat to Screen.  Or are
you specifically referring to bloated window managers for the tty?

Note that I don't believe replacing the existing, limited
domain-specific language (DSL) used in ^A: and .screenrc with an
embedded general-purpose language will *necessarily* add bloat.

Using a third-party language would (hopefully) reduce the amount of
code that the Screen developers need to maintain, as well as the
obvious benefit to users of having more customizability.

> The trend I would like to see is not just extending screen with a
> powerful language but reducing the C code where possible by this
> language.

I'd certainly like the *core* of Screen to remain in C, or some other
language for which an efficient optimizing compiler exists.  I don't
mind if extra bits (for example, the code to turn the window data into
a string for %w) was converted to a language that's interpreted
on-the-fly.  Separation of "core" from "extra wank that users insist
on" might also reduce the burden on the Screen maintainers.