Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik writes:
Why is this even being discused... you have the ability to add anything to the phone once you get your hands on it
The reason is the same reason the device is being shipped with a given kernel (Linux), a given set of libraries (glibc, gtk), etc. So that when a developer writes an application, it will be known to be able to run on all shipped devices. So, in this light, it may be benificial to included a standard interpreted language that can be a known target. The benefits to having an interpreter included (esp. one that has hooks into the gui and other phone functions) are that more apps will be made available -- there are more hackers that can code up quick scripts than ones that will learn & code for a specific gui accessible only from a compiled language. And, the benefit of having a particular interpreter is that when these little apps / scripts are packaged up, you don't have a dependancy nightmare (even though this can be somewhat mitigated by a good package management system, it is only as good as the backend repository, and having self-contained packages are the simplest of all). Also, by settling on a single standard, even if it is one that some developers may have to learn, it makes it more worthwhile to learn a new scripting environment that is widely deployed on your target platform. But for these same reasons, the interpreted language target will need careful consideration, lets we get stuck with something that doesn't adequetly meet most needs. As a secondary issue, if the included interpreter is easily embeddable, then it would be nice to have it as the standard across all the included applets that can use it (i.e., it would be good if the email/sms client, phonebook manager, dialer, etc. were all scriptable). But whatever is decided on (if a single language is picked), a function library should be developed for it that includes access to all the phone specific features (in addition to the gui hooks). _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
