Re: Appreciation / Financial support

[David Kastrup]

Joseph Rushton Wakeling <address@hidden> writes:

> 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).

I don't want to remove "as much C++ as possible".  That's about as
useful as to remove "as much C as possible" from Emacs.  The point is to
consider C++ as the building language for primitives, and tie together
the primitives in Scheme.  At the current point, most of the control
flow is inaccessible from the Scheme layer.  That's not helpful for
extending, and it is not helpful for understanding LilyPond from a user
perspective.  The C++ layer most certainly is important as
underpinnings, but you can't understand LilyPond from the Scheme
perspective because not just functionality/performance but also logic
and control flow is tied to a large degree into that layer: you would
not dare working with "call-with-current-continuation", and most of the
time, the Scheme stacktrace (and debugger) is not significant for
finding out what happens.

-- 
David Kastrup