At 2:36 PM +0200 on 7/12/99, M. Uli Kusterer wrote:
>a) We have seen Serf and how it performs (any beta-testers can shed light
>on this?)
Far worse than the OpenTalk snapshot. I'm one of the testers.
>b) We have Interpreter walking and have real-life performance statistics of
>how fast it is even with the message-passing hierarchy so we can be sure
>it's up to the task
True.
>
>>Alain : We should at least give MetaCard a try, I think.
>
> I didn't say use MetaCard. I just said that they made a good choice when
>deciding to go the way of a CISC language, in that then for one (slow)
>interpreted command, many (fast) compiled-code instructions are performed,
>which gives better performance for commonly recurring things. I.e. you
>could sort a field using HyperTalk statements, but a "sort" command is
>faster.
Unless some moron gave you a bubble sort in the sort command <g>.
> No, that's not what we're doing. He's suggesting using an existing Perl
>interpreter (which was written in C/C++) and change it to interpret
>HyperTalk instead. But as BISON has a much better API for things like this,
>and HyperTalk is much more informal than Perl, I think this is not a good
>option.
Perl has an interpreter. Perl's interpreter is done in Yacc, which is
pretty much compatible with Bison. Grab yourself some Perl sources.
>
>>Uli : I have a feeling that Hypercard is much more structured than we
>>think...
>>Alain : �HyperCard 2.2 the Book� contains the formal syntax
>>specification of HyperTalk in one of its annexes.
>
>Alain, I never said that. I'm a defender of exactly the opposite: HyperTalk
>is, for a programming language, very informal. Yes, there is some basic
>grammar and syntax, but HT has a different structure from other languages.
>E.g. a C++ syntax would be much simpler than HyperTalk syntax. If we tried
>to press HyperTalk into a formal Syntax, we'd end up where Applescript is
>now.
HyperCard has a formal syntax. It has to, or a computer could never parse
it. It's just a complex one. Though C++ might be bigger these days.
