OT: Is there a more English-like Programming language than Transcript?

[Mark Schonewille]

Hi David,

Yes, I think that the xTalk-family provides us with the most English- 
like programming languages. Anything more sophisticated is doable,  
but also a lot of work. As an example, here is a script which  
responds to polite requests to create an object. Don't take this  
example too seriously, please.

on mouseUp
   doPhrase "Would you be so kind to create a field?"
   put the result into rslt
   if rslt is not empty then
     beep
     answer rslt
   end if
end mouseUp

on doPhrase theRequest
   put "(^[Pp]lease*|^[Cc]ould you please*|^[Ww]ould you" && ¬
   "be so kind to*)" into myPattern
   if matchText(theRequest,myPattern,myFormality) is false then
     return "Sorry, didn't hear ya!"
   else
     if last char of theRequest is among the chars of "?!"
     then delete last char of theRequest
     put word (number of words of myFormality + 1) to -1 of ¬
     theRequest into theRequest
     switch (word 1 of theRequest)
     case "create"
       repeat for each word myWord in theRequest)
         if myWord is not "a" then put myWord & space after ¬
         myNewRequest
       end repeat
       put myNewRequest
       try
         do myNewRequest
       catch myError
         return "Sorry, I could not" && theRequest
       end try
       break
       -- more "cases"
     default
       return "Sorry, I could not" && theRequest
     end switch
   end if
end doPhrase


Best regards,

Mark

--

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Consultancy and Software Engineering
http://economy-x-talk.com
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Op 11-aug-2006, om 0:13 heeft David Bovill het volgende geschreven:

> By the way is Transcript still the official term for Revs programming
> language?
>
> Spent an hour looking for links references and articles on English- 
> like
> programming languages - looking at the syntax. Found no good links  
> yet. Lots
> of stuff about COBOL, things about how it was the flavour of the  
> month in
> the 80's - how good perl is. Here is a nice quote from
> http://www.whynot.net/ideas/1441:
>
>    By this, I mean the source file would be something like a text  
> file..
> and the interpreter would interpret the english language commands  
> and build
> a program based on it. The commands for the English Programming  
> Language
> could be something like this (consider this a raw source file):
>
>    <begin source>
>>
>>     First, create a window approximately 75% of the screen size.  
>> Then, add
>> two menus to the top, one File and one Help. Under the File menu,  
>> add Exit.
>> When a user clicks on Exit, the program should exit. Under the  
>> help menu,
>> add a simple About option that describes this program.
>>
>>     Now create two buttons in the main window (the first one). The  
>> first
>> button should say "Message", and the second one should say  
>> "Exit" (without
>> the quotes). When a user clicks on Message, a message box should  
>> pop up
>> saying "Hello, World!". When the user clicks on the Exit button,  
>> the program
>> should exit.
>>
>>     <end source>
>>
>
> Now that would be more English-like than Transcript, but to date i  
> cannot
> find anything much more English-like than the syntax of Transcript.  
> There is
> some AI stuff like -
> http://www.softwaretheories.com/Examples/index.html(not a good link) -
> and Ruslan you there - some older links I had for
> parsers that took XML - there is an MIT project to create a meta  
> language...
> but no good links I can find - and certainly nothing solid and  
> useable.
>
> So the question is this - is Transcipt the best real programming  
> language
> out there in terms of it's English-likeness! That is the ease in  
> which a
> non-programmer, or non-speaker of the computer language can  
> understand it?
>
> Help, links, rants and gossip appreciated!