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Re: PHP fork project- Guile vs Python vs ?


On Sun, Jul 09, 2000 at 04:50:04PM -0600, Richard Stallman wrote:
> There is lots of experience with translating other languages into
> Scheme and Lisp, so we know it is practical.  We've already decided to
> do things this way.

It might be good to point to that: your original decision, many years ago,
was based on Adam Sah's tcl->scheme compiler called Rush which was
vaporware (Adam's own words).  Adam later admitted being embarassed
that he had over-sold it and that you had taken it so seriously.

Your original notes on it are attached below.  If you still base
your ideas on the fact that you saw Rush, then I think they need to be
revised.

If instead you have seen better examples that have come up since,
they should be advertised.  I have not seen anything better that
has reached any useable state, and over five years have gone by.

I still think the best approach is to endorse another non-lisp-like language
(probably Python), and make it easy to link to both Scheme and Python
interpreter libraries.  That way you cover both types of users, and they
can use the real languages they are accustomed to.

On the other hand, if one of the translators is really working, we should
all hear about it and it should be distributed in the main guile
distribution, since it is one of the official goals of the project.

----------

This is an excerpt from the "GNU Extension Language Plans" article:

rms> At the time, I had not come to a conclusion about what to do. I knew
rms> what sort of place I wanted to go, but not precisely where or how to
rms> get there.

rms> Since then, I've learned a lot more about the topic. I've read about
rms> scsh, Rush and Python, and talked with people working on using Scheme
rms> as an extension and scripting language. Now I have formulated a
rms> specific plan for providing extensibility in the GNU system.

Here is a note further clarifying:

From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: the free software replacement for IDL
To: rosalia@sstcx1.lanl.gov
CC: lord@gnu.ai.mit.edu, jaffer@gnu.ai.mit.edu, asah@cs.berkeley.edu,
	rosalia@hpemp.lanl.gov
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 07:37:22 -0400

    2. (not too important) Is the plan still to re-implement TCL on top of
    Guile starting Adam's rush interpreter?

Not exactly.  We simply plan to use rush.  It implements a language
that looks basically like TCL although it is cleaner in some ways.

Implementing TCL in a 100% compatible way could be done too, but not
starting from rush, and it wouldn't run so quickly.




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