externalPackages

[Richard Gaskin]

Björnke von Gierke wrote:

 > Richard is wrong. The goal is to be able to use any language,
 > including anything that is available for the separate OS-es.

Well, it certainly wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.  But given 
that the engine is currently written in C++ and much of the code is 
platform-independent, can you tell us more about this real goal and how 
it fits in with the development of a multi-platform toolkit like LiveCode?

It may be that some time down the road, perhaps not all that long from 
now, Apple quietly changes their SDK license to *require* Swift.  After 
all, the readers of this list know all too well they've tried that sort 
of thing before.   At that point developers like RunRev would have no 
choice but to rewrite their Cocoa calls in whatever language Apple demands.

But I'm not too worried: last time Apple tried to pull something like 
that the results were so disastrous that they completely backpedaled 
within a few months.  While they never apologized for the damage they 
caused, nor even publicly acknowledged that it was never in their 
interests to have attempted it, Steve's gone, his vendetta with Adobe 
played out, and Tim Cook is a much more cool-headed leader. I doubt 
we'll see those sorts of shenanigans again; I like to think Cook 
understands the impact it has on the company's reputation in terms of 
being a reliable partner, esp. at a time of declining market share.


 > However, there'll be a meta-LC like language, that is not quite LC,
 > but similar-ish, which will allow to write externals too. The Idea
 > is that it's similar enough for more people to delve in and do
 > Externals....

It's early days and my understanding is that the syntax shown in that 
video is only experimental.

But I share your view that it could be more LC-like - all we have to do 
is take a good look at ToolBook, which has supported optional data types 
and OS calls for decades.  Everything I might have written an external 
for in any other xTalk I wrote directly in ToolBook, all the way down to 
the Win APIs, with the same clean syntax throughout.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com