Mikey wrote:
Is there really an xTalk "standard"?
"xTalk" is a generic term used to describe all of these related
languages collectively (HyperTalk, SuperTalk, OpenScript, MetaTalk, etc.).
The commonalities among them form a de facto standard, with additional
weight usually given to HyperTalk in honor of its role as the "mother
tongue".
I have never seen a "standard", as the dialects can be somewhat different.
Yes, there's little point in making a new product which does everything
exactly the same as an existing product. SuperCard was the first
dialect, and since it allowed multiple windows within a single file, had
integrated color, etc., its language had to extend the original
HyperTalk. MetaTalk (which we're using now in Rev under a new name)
added even more to the object model which required new tokens, and
introduced new language features like "repeat for each", binary tokens, etc.
HT never required "the", and to my recollection, neither did SuperCard.
Regardless of what other program have done, in Rev "the" is required for
properties. Many of us got into the habit even when using HC if only to
make the scripts a tad more readable. Either way, the habit is easily
gained with a little practice.
It may help to note why this is required in Rev. I was talking about
this with Jacque, and she reminded me of Scott Raney's fetish for
reducing the branches in the token lookup table.
You've probably noticed that most things in Rev run several times faster
than in HC. This is not merely some nifty compiler optimization, it's a
product of the language design.
By requiring "the" before accessing properties, the engine can know it
only needs to look through the tokens for properties and functions,
whereas HyperCard needs to also look through all variables.
This is just one of a number of places where Rev is slightly less
flexible than HypeCard, many of which are outlined in Jacque's helpful
article on converting from HC:
<http://www.hyperactivesw.com/mctutorial/index.html>
While Rev is a tad more rigid, in practice I think you'll find the
modest learning curve more than pays for itself with much greater
performance.
If there is a "standard" then I want the name of whomever the Keeper
of the Standard is, since the Revolution grammar has some restrictions
that I would like to have addressed.
As a de facto standard there is no single keeper.
As for Rev, if you want to suggest changes the mechanism for logging
those requests is Bugzilla:
<http://support.runrev.com/bugzilla/bugzilla.php>
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Media Corporation
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[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com
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