On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 9:25 AM, John Ralls <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Christian: Please don't accept Python code into Gnucash. Python has > version-to-version compatibility problems, and I've found with pure-python > applications like Gramps that it requires bundling a Python interpreter with > the application so that everyone gets the same version. That 's for Mac, > which comes with Python. Windows doesn't, so either the Windows distribution > will have to include Python or users will have to download ActiveState's. We > already make them download ActiveState Perl if they want Finance::Quote, and > have a lot of support issues because of it. Let's not make that worse. > > Tim, you realize that in order to rewrite the reports in whatever language > you like, you'll have to become quite expert at Scheme anyway, right? You're > not going to save yourself any work or learning by translating the reporting > system into another language. > > Yes, I realize that :) But, at least once a rewrite is done it will be much easier to make changes going forward. > After all of that cold water, I want to emphasize that I do agree with Tim > that having the report system in Scheme is a major barrier to users creating > their own reports, and I agree that it should be rewritten into a more > widely-understood language. That needs to be in an interpreted language so > that it remains user-extensible. I think the only viable alternative to > Scheme is Javascript, for the following reasons: > > * We're already shipping WebKit as part of Gnucash for Windows and Mac, so > there's no extra interpreter to include. > * We use HTML to display the reports, and Javascript integrates naturally > with CSS and HTML; that's what it's designed for. > * Javascript is widely used by inexperienced programmers who want to juice > up a web page, so it's very approachable by users. > * Javascript supports many of the same programming styles that Scheme does, > so converting will be straightforward. > * We're already using Javascript to draw the graphs, showing that > Javascript can be introduced one report at a time, or even mixed with > Scheme, for a gradual migration path. > > I will go with Javascript then. When I have time I will try to come up with a strategy to accomplish this before I start to implement anything, but it may take some time to figure everything out since I will inevitably need to get a bit more familiar with the existing scheme system before I can make significant changes. Thanks, -Tim > Regards, > John Ralls > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-devel mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel > _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
