Subject: FVWM: Re: Tcl, fvwm, etc.,

From: Jim Crigler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 23:53:22 -0500 (CDT)

In reference to parsing existing .fvwm2rc files, I wrote:

> Perl can parse anything.  What's the problem?

>>>>> "B" == Brady Montz <[email-masked]> replied:

 B> Many people, including myself, will refuse to have anything to do
 B> with perl. It's not wise to pick a language on so many people's
 B> blacklists. Guile, while probably tecnically the most feasable,
 B> should probably be set aside for the same reason.

Do you mean that you don't visit web sites with server side CGI (most
estimates put Perl at 75-80% of CGI)?  I doubt it.  You seem to mean
that you have religious intolerance against using perl yourself.  From
what I understand, the main blacklist Perl is on is that of the
Computer Science establishment.  If that's your perspective, why not
say so.

Perl's not perfect, and I wouldn't use it for some things because it's
just unsuitable.  But an FVWM2 configuration is a small database of
sorts, and perl handles those quite nicely.

>>>>> "V" == Vlad D. Markov <[email-masked]> wrote:

 V> I appreciate Fvwm's small memory consumption and speed. My computer is
 V> an old 486 DX66. I prefer not to bring up an interpreter to do common
 V> tasks. I hope Fvwm does not get bloated.

And Brady replied:

 B> I agree. That's why I made the point (and will make again) that we
 B> should have at most one interpreter running. I negelected to say
 B> that fvwm should work perfectly nicely without having an
 B> interpreter built in as well. That's also a prerequisite I would
 B> want satisfied.

But FVWM already *has* an interpreter running!  You can pull up the
FvwmTalk module any old time you want, issue commands.  No, it doesn't
do conditionals and looping (which CS tells us is sufficient for most
reasonable things to be done in reasonable time), but it *is* and
interpreter and it *is* running all the time.

So I think we agree that the extension language might very well reside
in a module rather than in the "core" code.  Hmmm... what visibility
to the "core" data structures can/should a module have?  Given a
module extansion language implementation, there's an awful lot of data
to have to pass around ...

-- 
Jim Crigler   (407)850-9677 | Crown Him with many crowns
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Orlando FL 32812-7941       | Crown Him ye kings who rule the earth
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