OpenEuphoria

1. Phix Tutorial problems

• Posted by RobertS Dec 12, 2022
• 8681 views

This is only a minor grievance to me, but I thought I'd bring it up because it might put off potential users of Phix.

Following the "run pw edita" suggestion on the "Tutorial" page of the Phix website, I came across these issues in the "Welcome" text:

I recommend the tutorial by Wolfgang Fritz & Ad Rienks -> 404 Not Found
… and also the 'gateway' by Dan Moyer -> this is 22 years old
Visit http://www.listfilter.com/EUforum/ to ask questions or request help. -> Domain for sale
Open ealtest.exw and press F5 to run it. -> Cannot open arwen\arwen.ew

And then, in the "Help" menu, "Manual" -> 404 Not Found

This is where I gave up. Again, not really a problem for me, I'm happy enough with Phix without even knowing what Edita is meant to do, but for someone interested in Phix who is happy to see "Tutorial" (and probably expects one for Phix, not Edita), this is probably not a good experience?

Robert

3. Re: Phix Tutorial problems

• Posted by RobertS Dec 19, 2022
• 7688 views

Might it be helpful if I tried to write an entry-level introduction to Phix? Just covering some 0.5% of the language, but possibly helping those who are either new to Phix or new to programming take the first steps and understand some of the basics? I don't want to obtrude, and I'd willingly take no for an answer, but I'd as willingly try to see what I can come up with, if you think it's worth a try.

5. Re: Phix Tutorial problems

• Posted by RobertS Dec 20, 2022
• 7501 views

Great! Give me two or three weeks, then I'll post a link to a draft version, and we can see if it's any good and how to proceed with it.

7. Re: Phix Tutorial problems

• Posted by petelomax Jan 05, 2023
• 5850 views

OK, brutal bit first, for me it rather "lacks ambition". I appreciate there are limits to what can be explained and know all too well how tough these things can be, for instance my latest additions to the standard docs must be on their fifth complete rewrite by now, and there are 85 automated backups of that one page just from December 2022, most of which would have led to a full rebuild and re-reading of it.

It is all very well and good to write a tutorial that shows how to write a grubby console app that could have been written on a zx80 in the 1980s, but it isn't going to excite or interest anyone. It needs to lead somewhere: maybe something you wrote, or browse https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Phix/online or a selected subset of those, maybe even appropriately grouped and with some nice screenshots. The last part should pick one, reproduce the source code, perhaps manage to explain a few more bits, but without falling down the rabbit-hole, and refer them to the docs for any other questions it might raise. It should be short enough to digest, but also just sufficiently complex to spark someone's imagination. A screen shot of it running should probably be the opening introduction picture right at the start. [I think the Clock example ticks (geddit) more boxes than most, but it's not exactly exciting.]

Anyway, to the text itself (feel free to edit/reject any suggestions, me got plenty places to say stuff):

Phix is not a fork, maybe you could say clone. Here's my version of your opening paragraph (bit too long?):
Phix is similar to another programming language you have probably never heard of, Euphoria, and inherits a few things from that such as .exw and .e file extensions. Euphoria has been around since the 1990s, and is written in C with some parts self hosted and transpiled to C, which should theoretically make it easier to port. Phix has been around quite a bit less, since just before 2010, is a complete rewrite, and is entirely self-hosted/directly generates executables. Both require an existing working version to build, but that can be done on a completely different operating system. The chicken and egg problem was/is solved in Euphoria via C, and was/no longer needed in Phix via FASM.

Aside: technically there is a third kind of subroutine: type (just sayin, you might be quite right to leave it out)

This implies that functions or procedures cannot mutually call each other, at least not without an explicit forward declaration (which we'll explain later)... or maybe:
For two routines to mutually call each other, you need to use an explicit forward declaration[, which is not entirely unlike the way C does things, except in Phix they are the rare exception rather than the rule].

Aside: technically file extensions can be anything you like, but:
Any include statement must exactly match the actual filename.
Most editors use the file extension to determine syntax colouring.
After entering "p hello", and as long as it fails to find "hello", the interpreter will look for "hello.exw", but
it won't for instance[/as yet] try looking for, say, "hello.phix" - but it would be fine if run as "p hello.phix".
Likewise the OS can be set up to open .exw files with the Phix interperter when you double-click on them,
and should you start using (say) ".phix" then any such association would obviously need to be replicated.

Re `selecting the index tab in the Phix documentation`: If you are using the supplied Edita the syntax colouring should immediately alert you to any potential clashes, and of course the same would be true with any other editor once full and proper syntax highlighting for Phix source code is configured.

After "if you change its value, this will not be passed back to the calling routine" add ", unless of course you do so explicitly".

After "Let’s try with declaring s as a string, which is what it is supposed to be, after all." you've left it as "sequence s"

After "Something like s[3][6..8][2] ist not possible, though" (and deleting the rogue t), " - what that would be asking for is actually just s[3][7], so use that simpler form instead, or perhaps you meant vslice(s[3][6..8],2) - if needed look up vslice in the standard docs".

Aside: re doublequotes and backticks: backtick strings cannot contain escaped characters, so `hello\n` is the same as "hello\\n" and not "hello\n".
That the backend shows `It's me` instead of "It's me" is a mini-buglette down to `She said "Ugh" to me` being deemed better than "She said \"Ugh\" to me" if you see what I mean, and the single quote is (incorrectly) triggering what only doublequotes would actually benefit from. The one thing I really try to avoid is displaying {72,101,108,108,111} instead of "Hello", not that I can always manage that.

As you can probably imagine, the number of times I've said to myself "wouldn't it be nice if" about ? (or some other feature) is something I lost track of rather a long time ago, and quite a few got slapped in while I was letting my subconscious unpick something else. Things like puts() do a very specific job and can be/are tested on a regular basis, whereas ? follows no standards and would be difficult to test(/capture) even if it did.

I was co-incidentally thinking of making backticks the primary/more common means of declaring strings, and the default form for ?, on the basis of it being immediately obvious there are no escaped characters, but for now I'm just trying that idea out in this new gui thing I'm toying with (with no changes to ? planned as yet).

9. Re: Phix Tutorial problems

• Posted by petelomax Jan 05, 2023
• 5765 views

Aw, don't give up so easily! It was inevitable I was going to say something a bit harsh, and quite remiss of me to forget a little "thank you", it is quite good really, just that of course pretty much everything can be improved. It's fine if your vision and mine differ, I was just trying to push you towards loftier goals, and it's in my nature to never ever accept the first thing offered. The one/only thing I think it misses is an "inspirational image", and I was just trying to think of a way to justify one. I often find myself reading/skimming quite a few tutorials, and "show me an image then" is a faily common thought. Maybe deliberately leave it to one side for a couple of weeks and come back to it, see how you feel then.

11. Re: Phix Tutorial problems

• Posted by RobertS Jan 14, 2023
• 4577 views

Here is an updated version: www.hypatia-rpn.net/phix-introduction.pdf

I've fixed the errors that Pete has pointed out (really embarrassing ones among them), but I'm afraid that the main point of criticism still holds, that as an introduction it lacks ambition, is restricted to console apps, and doesn't provide inspirational examples that might appeal to potential users. Of course, I have no idea who those potential users may be, where they'd be coming from, what they might be looking for … Anyway, some further edits apart, this is all I can do – I think it might be better than nothing, but I'm probably not a good judge for that. Even if it is, it would be good if someone else would add the things that are missing (I could write a bit more about some basic language features, but that wouldn't address the main issue).

Robert

13. Re: Phix Tutorial problems

• Posted by katsmeow Jan 14, 2023
• 4512 views

Possibly... "effective"?

Kat

15. Re: Phix Tutorial problems

• Posted by petelomax Jan 18, 2023
• 4030 views

Having not thought about this myself for a couple of weeks, it is now blindlingly obvious that rather than a boring static image at the start it should be a web page (not pdf) that shows a running clock and finishes with something like:

While it's a bit beyond the scope of this brief introduction, here (better yet inline) is the source code for the clock shown at the start, and the exact same runs almost identically on Windows, Linux, and in a web browser.
It is probably perfectly possible to achieve something similar with, say, node+React, not that I've been able to find a similar example [anyone?], but I think you'll agree that single source file is significantly easier.
Of course the whole JavaScript ecosystem (ditto many other programming languages) has tens of thousands of eager contributors and we're not quite there yet with Phix, but if you're prepared to roll your sleeves up...

May take me a while to cobble something together - pretty much just a slightly tedious manual cut and paste job of the links just given (plus a mere six supporting files).
It would of course be nice to have editable syntax coloured code as per CodePen and the like, maybe on some kind of wiki, but one step at a time, eh?

PS: There's a planned upgrade to Miraheze on Jan 21, fingers crossed that'll include an updated pygments with proper Phix syntax colouring rather than the horrible mess I currently use, so I'll certainly wait for that.
PPS: There's no rush on this and I also certainly wouldn't bother to publish it anyway while that piggin segfault on Linux is still hanging over my head.

17. Re: Phix Tutorial problems

• Posted by petelomax Jan 18, 2023
• 3952 views

Erm, ok, <pause>, relax, calm down, that's fine, no worries.. I did say "May take me a while", meaning I expected to do it myself, and there's no hurry, haste or panic here.

Hmm, that's fine, we're all unique individuals. I must admit I'm a little surprised those 130 lines of code provoked such alarm (geddit?), and I get we're a little different, like you're into books and poetry in a way I'm not, and likewise I trust you understand that I'm simply just trying to appeal to the broadest possible audience.

19. Re: Phix Tutorial problems

• Posted by irv Feb 01, 2023
• 2259 views

I would hope that your recent experience with Hypatia would have proven something:

There are few people who write console programs because, as you found out, that requires writing completely different and fairly complex code just to handle I/O for each platform.

Writing with a cross-platform GUI all that work is no longer necessary, user I/O requires just a few lines of code, and lets you concentrate your effort on the "guts" i.e. function of your program. Users also find it easier to navigate a familiar interface.