> Julian blackhirst : The way i see it we should first design the
> language.
Alain : You're probably right.
> Julian blackhirst : I think the whole thing should be programmable.
Alain : You're absolutely right.
> Julian blackhirst : ... for instance. Instead of having a button
> called "a" on a card you could have a make file: ... Any way you get
> the general idea.That way files could be edited in text
> editors as well. We could include a resource file for the card pict
> and other resources. That would also make it more compatible with
> windows because they have .res files.
Alain : I like the file/resource thing because it will allow us to edit
a stack - parts and scripts - without interacting with the GUI. Its
particularly useful if you script stuff that scripts stuff.
> Julian blackhirst : We should then make a compiler: We write the
> compiler in C/C++. The compiler compiles both the make code and the
> OpenTalk scripts. The compiler can compile to a application or a java
> applet.
Alain : The YACC tool mentionned on this list recently create
C-compilers, if I am not mistaken.
> Julian blackhirst : Java applets we would just have to compile to
> byte code for interpreting from the java VM.
Alain : I am relieved that you make this sound so easy.
> Julian blackhirst : Ok at this stage we can make stacks in text form
> and compile them with our compiler. Fine.
Alain : See one of my comments above.
> Julian blackhirst : Now to prove the flexibility of our wonderful new
> compiler we write an editor in our language to be compiled by our
> compiler.
Alain : I like this "bootstrapping" strategy.
> Julian blackhirst : The editor would look and feel just like HC but
> underneath would just
> automatically create code to compile. As we work in OpenCard it just
> generates code behind it depending on what we do. It could write the
> resources to the resource file.
Alain : Automatically compile scripts the first time they are run, just
like HyperCard does, eh !
> Julian blackhirst : This would be the easiest, fastest and most
> reliable was to do it.
Alain : Keep up the good work, Julian.
