externalPackages

[Richard Gaskin]

Björnke von Gierke wrote:

 > On 14 Aug 2014, at 01:12, Richard Gaskin 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?
 >
 > You said there'll only be the new LC-like language to do externals.

Chalk it up perhaps to my bad writing; what I tried to suggest was that 
externals as we know them today would for the most part no longer be 
needed at all.

An "external" is a object code file written in another language that was 
compiled with that language's compiler.  Currently this is the only way 
to directly interface LiveCode with OS APIs, which is why we put up with 
the cumbersome requirements for dealing with them.

What I suggested was that many of the things we used to write externals 
for would in many cases not need to be externals at all, using a new 
variant of LiveCode as shown in Kevin's video.

So yes, to the degree that there's still a place for externals when Open 
Language is in our hands, they can continue to be written in any 
language where LC's externals API can be used.

But it would seem from the video that such cases would be very few, 
perhaps specialized routines requiring optimal CPU performance (where 
compiled C will be hard to beat), but not for things merely needing to 
talk to OS APIs.


 > Instead there'll be most available languages, due to the way the new
 > approach is different then the current one. One of the possible
 > languages, and of course the one that ppl need to use a bit for
 > wrapping the interfaces, will be the additional, new LC-like
 > language. That is only concerning the new external interface.

I think we may be on the same track more than it seemed at first.

I have no knowledge of the future plans for externals.  I rarely use 
them now, and never write any new ones, so I've had almost no interest 
in them at all.

But direct OS API access from within LiveCode - for me, that opens up a 
lot of interesting possibilities, the sort of thing I used to very much 
enjoy back when I could afford to do single-platform stuff in ToolBook.

Being able to deliver code I can manage as gracefully as a LiveCode 
library without the strange finicky requirements of externals 
initialization or needing to leave LiveCode to go run some 
otherwise-completely-unrelated compiler will be quite exciting.

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