Re: Appreciation / Financial support

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 03/06/12 14:17, David Kastrup wrote:
> How about first getting C++/Scheme right?  As I already explained,
> cleaning up the mess of layers and control flow will
>
> a) give a better basis for judging that approach
> b) make it easier to migrate individual layers to something else if
>     desired

Don't get me wrong; I'm not proposing a rewrite on the spot or even in the near 
future.  It's just that if there _is_ at some point a desire to consider a 
bottom-up rebuild with a new language or framework, D is probably one to take 
seriously, as it offers the power and flexibility of LISP and functional 
languages while having a very friendly and usable syntax.

But in the short term at least, I completely agree with you about getting the 
C/Scheme combo right (if I understood your earlier email correctly, the desire 
is to remove as much C++ as possible).

> Take a look at Goops: it offers a lot of the things the C++ class system
> does, with reasonable performance and much better reflection and
> extensibility.  I am currently working on moving the property/event
> system there, and one will have to see what the performance impact on
> that will be.

I'll give it a look.

> It's all nice to throw all sort of language names into the ring, but as
> long as the architecture of LilyPond is one incoherent mess, porting it
> is not going to clean it up.

Agree about architecture being the priority.  I can make no promises as my 
LP-wards free time is sporadic, but I would like to assist here if I can.

That said, I didn't make the language suggestion casually.  One of the issues 
with Scheme is that although it's powerful it's also an unfamiliar and 
not-so-easy-to-grasp scripting syntax when compared with the languages lots of 
people are familiar with.  D has the advantage of being high-performance (as 
fast as C/C++ in my experience), having a syntax which is easy to switch to from 
C/C++/Java/C#/etc., but also having the functional/LISP-like constructs needed 
by LilyPond.

It would be a major breaking change, though, so not to be done without very 
careful consideration.