>Alain: Both of these should be external and programmed
>in low-level code, just as it is now in HyperCard,
>such that the debugging stuff remains efficient and
>transparent.
Alain,
but somehow I'd like to roll a bit of it into the engine itself...
>Alain: It depends on the XCMD. If your XCMD was made
>in order to hide/protect your code and/or make
>repetitive actions faster, then it is likely that
>these XCMDs will continue to run properly on all
>platforms. The problem arises when your XCMD
>capitalizes on platform-specific features.
Just one problem: Those XCMDs would need to be recompiled, and since
the XCMD protocol relies on handles (which is a MacOS-only feature,
though Win has entirely different animals of the same name), making
them cross-platform would have to be done the way Oracle did it for
OMO ... not sure whether we should do that.
>Alain: We are aiming at 100%-HyperCard-compatibility
>in the 1.x versions of FreeCard, correct? If so, then
>the above should be included as soon as possible. Do
>you agree?
It's getting even tougher ... Yes, you're right, for 100% HC
compatibility we'd need to implement it the exact same way. Even
though my inner bastard would prefer leaving this out. OTOH, we
already have XFromApp, and I know the calling conventions of the
debugger callbacks ... This should be rather easy to implement.
>Alain: In HyperCard, the Script-Editor, the
>Variable-Watcher, and the Message-Watcher are external
>resources, coded at the same (low-)level as HyperCard
>is. What's more, you can substitute these resources
>with your own variants of these debugging facilities.
>Isn't this how we should do it too?
We'd still be able to substitute it, just more easily, as it would
have a FreeScript interface. And nobody would keep you from calling
an XCMD in your FreeScript code.
>Alain: This exceeds my current knowledge and
>experience in programming, unfortunately.
MetaCard's debugger and script editor and all UI parts are done in
MetaTalk, which simplifies porting a lot.
>Alain: This is news, sort of. I surmised, of course,
>that we would eventually get around to comparing
>ourselves to ALL of the other xCards out there, but,
>to my knowledge, nothing has been posted about this,
>until now.
Of course I didn't mean to leave out the other xTalks, but as Serf
is heading down a quite different road than xTalk these days, and MC
is one of the few ones still actively taking part in standardizing
xTalk, their name came to my mind first. I am a strong believer in
trying to keep xTalk syntax as homogenous as possible, and as MC have
gone to great lengths to maintain HyperCard's syntax (they overdid it
for the "palette" command, but nonetheless it's a valiant effort) and
expand upon it, I think we will be walking a similar path. That's why
I said "where feasible": There are mistakes they made from which we
can learn.
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
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