Nice to see this playful approach.
Maybe in those explorations GraalVM should be put in the radar:
https://www.graalvm.org/
Cheers,
Offray
On 2/03/19 11:03 a. m., Edward K. Ream wrote:
Imo, Leo is at a solid, stable state. Sure, it could be improved, but
it doesn't need to be.
My overall goal is to substantially improve Leo for Leo's existing
users, either by adding major new features or by improving Leo's reach
in the world.**This post will discuss prototypes that further that goal.
*Background*
Leo's environment (the programming world) is shifting daily.
WebAssembly promises to be an earthquake. Rust and WebAssembly
demonstrate that there has been huge progress in type checking, to an
extent I never dreamed possible. Both compilers can check their input
in linear time, a remarkable feat.
It's way too soon to know exactly how this will play out, so this is a
good time to experiment with prototypes. And the easiest form of
prototypes are thought experiments. Here are some ideas that I'll
pursue this year, in roughly the order of importance:
*node.js*
*
*
One of my primary goals is finding a way to use Joe Orr's work.
Playing with node.js (and maybe Vue.js) seems like a good place to
start. However, this goal is murky, so this prototype may come later,
if at all.
*WebAssembly*
WebAssembly is way too important to ignore. I'll play with
WebAssembly, including WebAssembly hosted on the desktop
<https://github.com/mbasso/awesome-wasm#non-web-embeddings>.
*Rust, types, lifetimes and design
*
I've said many times that we programmers know (or think we know) the
types of our objects. Rust shows the bounds of this statement. It's
not really enough to know the types of objects, we must be aware of
their lifetimes <https://doc.rust-lang.org/1.9.0/book/lifetimes.html>.
Rust shows that making both lifetimes and types an explicit part of a
language has big benefits. And yes, some drawbacks. Few Python
programmers know (or care) about the lifetimes of our objects. I don't
myself, except during startup and shutdown.
As a thought experiment, it would be good to do a paper redesign of
Leo's classes, focusing on lifetimes. That might show ways to improve
Leo's classes. There is no reason to do this in Leo itself, but it
would be useful design exercise, and might lead to other projects.
*Qt Quick and generalized Leo windows*
Qt Quick <https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtquick-index.html> is a framework
for designing and loading Qt windows. Loading these windows is driven
by QML <https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtqml-index.html>, a variant of XML.
Optionally, users can use Qt Designer
<https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtdesigner-manual.html> to create the QML. It
might also be useful to generate QML from Leo outlines...
Qt Quick is advertised to be highly dynamic, but that might only be
possible using JS. We shall see. Qt Quick might revolutionize Leo's
windowing scheme, /provided/ that Qt Quick can be made dynamic using
Python.
Terry and I have wanted a more flexible windowing scheme for Leo. We
want a flexible, general way to introduce (and use!) new panes. The
present code is a bit of a nightmare. So a close look at Qt Quick is
in order.
*Fast tree redraw*
This is Leo issue #1068
<https://github.com/leo-editor/leo-editor/issues/1068>. I've changed
my mind: I'll certainly play with this project. However, I still have
no commitment to folding this into Leo.
*Summary*
My overall goal is to substantially improve Leo /for Leo's existing
users/, either by adding major new features or by improving Leo's
reach in the world.
Qt Quick might revolutionize Leo's windowing scheme, /provided/ that
Qt Quick can be made dynamic using Python.
**
Other projects are more speculative. This posts lists projects in
order of importance, but I'll do them in whatever order seems easiest.
Edward
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