Alain,
just chiming in: We're not programming wildly around without a plan. We
are writing very basic, re-useable components at the moment. There are
still some components left. So far, only the interpreter is a part that's
specific to FreeCard. A block file format, a text engine, cross-platform
wrappers -- all that is a building part, but not one that other projects
couldn't use.
The trouble with other code is that it usually relies on other libraries
as well. E.g. most text engines are bound to some cross-platform wrapper,
which means if we find a text engine we like, we'd also need to take its
wrapper. OTOH if we found a wrapper we like, we might have to roll our own
text engine.
That's one of the reasons why Perl might be a problem. The code that works
in Perl is aimed at a completely different line of users. First and
foremost programmers. But FreeCard won't do with toolbox access. FreeCard
needs the toolbox abstracted away into stacks, window parts or something
like that. If we gave HyperCarders access to the Toolbox, they'd just have
to learn programming with a more verbose language. But HC's verbosity works
because its conception does much of the work for you. You don't have to
write an event loop, you don't have to create a window pointer, you don't
have to explicitly select a window and react on redraw events.
You just create a window and put a line in it, and the rest is handled by HC.
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.weblayout.com/witness
'The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere...'
--- HELP SAVE HYPERCARD: ---
Details at: http://www.hyperactivesw.com/SaveHC.html
Sign: http://www.giguere.uqam.ca/petition/hcpetition.html
