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Re[2]: [stellation-res] Proposed Changes in Bugzilla (#31581 )
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At 04:38 PM 2/12/2003, Marco Qualizza wrote:
>> Note: I exclude Javascript or, pardon me, ECMAscript, from the category of
>> scripting languages. I worked with it, briefly, and would far rather use
> VB
>> if only those two were available (not saying much!). I'm still a Python
>> newbie, but my limited experience with it has been very positive. It would
>> be interesting to hear other suggestions; please consider ease-of-learning
>> as well as expressive power and support for domain-specific vocabularies.
Out of curiousity, what don't you like about JavaScript?
Variable initialization, for one.
(some details here may be wrong; it was 16 months ago...)
I built a set of scripts for generating PDFs from Eclipse online docs
and Javadoc HTML, using the HTMLDoc engine for HTML -> PDF conversion.
The suite made it very easy to make print-friendly Javadoc PDFs from one or
more packages / source trees, and tolerably easy to make printable PDFs from
the non-standard Eclipse help format.
The project involved a number of Javascript scripts for Win32 WSH (Windows
Scripting Host) manipulations, defining a number of variables shared by
several functions. Variables were (initially) declared above the appropriate
function. When I reorganized / refactored the functions -- the script broke,
mysteriously, because the variables are initialized top-down, in a different
order from the actual control flow.
Modularity was another problem.
I could find no way for one script to reliably call another (possibly an
artifact of
Windows Scripting Host, but it didn't happen using Python with WSH).
Thus, I had to create a single composite script for each WSH task, drawing on
a set of 'library function' scripts.
I'm sure Mark could add quite a few more flaws - Javascript is not remotely
typesafe, for one thing, and the syntax.... well. If memory serves, Javascript
was a very quick hack, by a programmer not very familiar with language design,
that somehow took on a life of its own....
Python also has a number of warts, of course (but it suits my own quirks
better).
A quick Google yielded some useful links:
http://www.python.org/doc/essays/comparisons.html
http://www.python.org/doc/Comparisons.html
Ruby is another interesting possibility (which I have no experience with)
A comparison of Ruby and Python is here:
http://www.rubygarden.org/iowa/faqtotum/abk8uZHYjd2bA/b/1.11.7.2.5
Not being a Perl hacker (and disliking Perl's syntactic variability immensely),
I'm not drawn to it immediately, but am willing to learn more about it.
http://www.smallscript.org/Language%20Comparison%20Chart.asp
has an interesting comparison chart, and a large number of links
to other comparisons.
They mention S# (SmallScript, based on Smalltalk-98), but this
turns out to be commercial: see
http://www.smallscript.org/SmallScriptWebsite.asp
http://www.ipd.uka.de/~prechelt/documents/jccpp_tr.pdf
is an excellent study:
"An empirical comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl
for a search/string-processing program", written in 2000.
http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.lang.misc/language_comparisons.html
is another useful overview.
http://www.hypermetrics.com/ruby37.html
is a paen for Ruby.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-ruby1.html
is a useful article on Ruby
>>
> Do you know if there is a plugin that would allow Python to be used inside
> Eclipse? While I have never used Python myself I have heard good things
> about it. Maybe I have just not encountered a good one.
Jython is a Java implemention of Python; which might form a starting point.
There is a sourceforge project which a) has posted code and b) is
still apparently alive: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyeclipse/
-- however, it's still at pre-alpha.
BTW are you aware
> that the Eclipse folks tried to add a scripting facility to Eclipse and
then
> backed off as they could not get a satisfactory result apparently. The
first
> cut code is in the CVS repository.
Yes, I knew about that. I'd like to see it revived: it's a clear lack in
the current platform.
> With regards to a scripting language, I suspect that there might be a
> substantial job in building a bridge between the language and the
Stellation
> objects to be manipulated.
WxPython http://www.wxpython.org/ is an example of integrating Python
with a GUI framework that's received good feedback and has lasted a while.
(I haven't used it). Looking at WxPython, it's clear a *lot* of work is needed
to integrating Python with a GUI framework.... and Eclipse is a lot more than
just a GUI ...
Of course, similar GUI-control-API issues would arise when adapting any
scripting
language to run within Eclipse.
OTOH - for our purposes, we don't necessarily need fully scriptable control
over all aspects of Eclipse; an API focused on SCM-related tasks, behaviors
and packaged UI components might be enough to do quite a lot.
Regards,
Jim
--
Jim Wright, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
*** The Stellation project: Advanced SCM for Collaboration
*** http://www.eclipse.org/stellation
*** Work Email: jwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ------- Personal Email:
jim.wright@xxxxxxx
