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[Texmacs-dev] Getting rid of Scheme?
From: |
Salman Khilji |
Subject: |
[Texmacs-dev] Getting rid of Scheme? |
Date: |
Tue, 6 Apr 2004 19:40:16 -0700 |
User-agent: |
KMail/1.5.1 |
I would like to inquire the feasibility of making TeXmacs independent of
Scheme. Please give me your comments about whether one of the following is
possible:
Note: Even if noone is interested in this, I may do it just for myself if I
can ever understand enough of the TeXmacs internals.
1) Expose necessary functions within TeXmacs to Python. Then basically
rewrite the progs directory in Python. One can then use Python to customize
the keyboard and the menus. How much of a work does this sound to be?
2) Eventhough I like Python much better than Scheme, I still believe that for
maintainability reasons a computer program should be written in one language.
The reason being that not all C++ programmers know Python and not all Python
programmers know C++. The exact same is true for Scheme as well. So while
the syntax of Python IMHO is 1000% better than that of Scheme I would not
like any scripting capability in my own version of TeXmacs. So I would like
to basically write a DLL that has all the functionaility that the 'progs'
directory in the TeXmacs distribution contains. This basically means writing
the 'progs' directory in C++ and making it available as a DLL. Customizing
TeXmacs would then mean recompiling this DLL instead of messing around with
the pathetic language know as Scheme. I personally would recompile a C++ DLL
over reading and modifying Scheme any time.
3) While going thru a short guile tutorial, I came to learn that Guile can
emulate other languages. i.e if you expose your application to Guile, the
user can actually write their scripts in Python instead of Scheme. Is this
possible?
I have already put Scheme on my list of unlearnables---or lets put it that
way---waste of time to learn in presence of more modern languages like
Python.
I had once requested any recommendations of links that pointed to a nice
introduction to Scheme. David recommended a link. I followed it. Later I
also tried another one of the very popular links recommended by people. I
finally came to a conclusion that Scheme must be written for idiots. Both of
the most popular links that I followed wanted to teach me programming from
scrach. The authors wanted me to learn what a computer is---and that a
computer runs something called a program....and a program has variables. And
how to develop logic to write a computer program. And how to spell
'computer'.
Basically I don't need to read 500 pages to see what Scheme is. Compare this
to Python, I once read a nice 40 pages introduction to Python and now I am
capable to following Python code pretty well....even though I can't write my
own Python programs, I can at least understand them. That was all one
afternoon. Comparing this to an afternoon that I spent on Scheme....well all
I can say that the author wasted my time assuming that I was in idiot in a
4th grade trying to write a computer program for the first time in my life.
Salman
- [Texmacs-dev] Getting rid of Scheme?,
Salman Khilji <=