1. Why Euphoria's great and why we need a Mac port.

My friend and I were talking earlier and it struck me how much Euphoria rocks
and that we need an official Mac OS X port.

At work he came up with a very nice idea for an application designed to teach
languages. After discussing this for a while and agreeing that yes, this could be
a very cool (and profitable) product we decided to see if we could actually go
about making it. Me, being the nuts-and-bolts guy I am, brought up the issue of
what language(s) should we use for this. We'll need something that can do text
processing, lexical analysis, graphics, and (this is the most important thing)
work on a Mac. He suggested we use C (or one of it's offshoots) potentially with
SDL for graphics and an embeded scripting language because C usually isn't the
top choice for text processing and language analysis. We looked at the
"mainstream" languages commonly used as an embeded scripting language (Python,
Perl, Ruby, TCL, LISP, and Lua) and this was our consensus:

Perl - Excellent text processing language but doesn't scale well in big
projects.

TCL - Much better when using in a large project but doesn't have the same power
as Perl that we need.

Python - Pretty much the same as TCL.

Ruby - Good for representing abstract data but lacked the power/efficiency of
Perl.

Lua - Easy to read and write large portions of it but wasn't powerful enough.

LISP - Excellent and both extracting and representing abstract lexical data and
scales up and down very well. The only problem is that the syntax isn't
everyone's cup of tea and can be quirky.

While we were discussing these languages I kept thinking to myself "Heck, if
Euphoria was available for the Mac we probably wouldn't even need to embed a
language, we could just use Euphoria entirely" since Euphoria's fast enough that
the overhead is negligible in most cases. In fact so far all the algorithms we've
discussed I've initially described in Euphoria since it gives LISP's power with
BASIC-y syntax.


Pleeeease, please Rob port Euphoria to the Mac. I don't want to go back to Perl!
It would open up a whole new arena of coders and make Euphoria more of a
"legitimate" product. I would buy the source and port it myself but, sadly, I'm a
poor college student without a Mac. However, if money/hardware is an issue I
would be willing to donate some money for the developement of a Mac version. I
doubt it would be that hard since Mac OS X uses liberal amounts of FreeBSD code.

Oh yeah, in case anyone's wondering what we're using for the time being, we're
using (I think) Objective-C to interface with graphics and such and Guile (the
GNU projects version of Scheme for embeding stuff) for our hardcore data
mangling.
 I miss Euphoria already. :(

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2. Re: Why Euphoria's great and why we need a Mac port.

D. Newhall wrote:
> 
> My friend and I were talking earlier and it struck me how much Euphoria rocks
> and that
> we need an official Mac OS X port.
> 
> At work he came up with a very nice idea for an application designed to teach
> languages.
> After discussing this for a while and agreeing that yes, this could be a very
> cool
> (and profitable) product we decided to see if we could actually go about
> making it.
> Me, being the nuts-and-bolts guy I am, brought up the issue of what
> language(s) should
> we use for this. We'll need something that can do text processing, lexical
> analysis,
> graphics, and (this is the most important thing) work on a Mac. He suggested
> we use
> C (or one of it's offshoots) potentially with SDL for graphics and an embeded
> scripting
> language because C usually isn't the top choice for text processing and
> language analysis.
> We looked at the "mainstream" languages commonly used as an embeded scripting
> language
> (Python, Perl, Ruby, TCL, LISP, and Lua) and this was our consensus:
> 
> Perl - Excellent text processing language but doesn't scale well in big
> projects.
> 
> TCL - Much better when using in a large project but doesn't have the same
> power as
> Perl that we need.
> 
> Python - Pretty much the same as TCL.
> 
> Ruby - Good for representing abstract data but lacked the power/efficiency of
> Perl.
> 
> Lua - Easy to read and write large portions of it but wasn't powerful enough.
> 
> LISP - Excellent and both extracting and representing abstract lexical data
> and scales
> up and down very well. The only problem is that the syntax isn't everyone's
> cup of
> tea and can be quirky.
> 
> While we were discussing these languages I kept thinking to myself "Heck, if
> Euphoria
> was available for the Mac we probably wouldn't even need to embed a language,
> we could
> just use Euphoria entirely" since Euphoria's fast enough that the overhead is
> negligible
> in most cases. In fact so far all the algorithms we've discussed I've
> initially described
> in Euphoria since it gives LISP's power with BASIC-y syntax. 
> 
> 
> Pleeeease, please Rob port Euphoria to the Mac. I don't want to go back to
> Perl! It
> would open up a whole new arena of coders and make Euphoria more of a
> "legitimate"
> product. I would buy the source and port it myself but, sadly, I'm a poor
> college student
> without a Mac. However, if money/hardware is an issue I would be willing to
> donate
> some money for the developement of a Mac version. I doubt it would be that
> hard since
> Mac OS X uses liberal amounts of FreeBSD code.
> 
> Oh yeah, in case anyone's wondering what we're using for the time being, we're
> using
> (I think) Objective-C to interface with graphics and such and Guile (the GNU
> projects
> version of Scheme for embeding stuff) for our hardcore data mangling.
>  I miss Euphoria already. :(
> 

Hi guys, just droping in:

This is probably not to big of an issue, assuming Robert modifies any x86
inline-ASM in his C code to PowerPC ASM instructions (when Apples switches to
Intel CPUs in 2006, this shouldnt be an issue).

I think Robert can use GCC v3.6 or GCC v4.x to compile the code for MacOS X 10.x
and produce Mach-O executables? For sure there are some 100% ANSII compliant C
compilers for MacOS X.

Then you guys can do bare-bones interfacing with the Carbon API (until you get
somthing like Win32Lib), which is a complete C style procedural API for MacOS X
development. Carbon is as complete as the Cocoa (Objective C) and the Java APIs.
Although Cocoa is the perfered API, Carbon can do everything Cocoa can (I
believe).

As far as I'm concerned, there shouldnt be much hassle getting Euphoria onto
MacOS X, and earlier.

Ofcourse there is plenty of issues getting support for WinFX (.NET), but I dont
want to go there again ;).

Cheers,
Vincent

----------------------------------------------
     ___	      __________      ___
    /__/\            /__________\    |\ _\
    \::\'\          //::::::::::\\   |'|::|
     \::\'\        //:::_::::_:::\\  |'|::|
      \::\'\      //::/  |::|  \::\\ |'|::|
       \::\'\    //::/   |::|   \::\\|'|::|
        \::\'\__//::/    |::|    \::\|'|::|
         \::\','/::/     |::|     \::\\|::|
          \::\_/::/      |::|      \::\|::|
           \::,::/       |::|       \:::::|
            \___/        |__|        \____|

 	                 .``.
		         ',,'

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3. Re: Why Euphoria's great and why we need a Mac port.

Vincent wrote:
> 
> D. Newhall wrote:
> > 
> > My friend and I were talking earlier and it struck me how much Euphoria
> > rocks and that
> > we need an official Mac OS X port.
> > 
> > At work he came up with a very nice idea for an application designed to
> > teach languages.
> > After discussing this for a while and agreeing that yes, this could be a
> > very cool
> > (and profitable) product we decided to see if we could actually go about
> > making it.
> > Me, being the nuts-and-bolts guy I am, brought up the issue of what
> > language(s) should
> > we use for this. We'll need something that can do text processing, lexical
> > analysis,
> > graphics, and (this is the most important thing) work on a Mac. He suggested
> > we use
> > C (or one of it's offshoots) potentially with SDL for graphics and an
> > embeded scripting
> > language because C usually isn't the top choice for text processing and
> > language analysis.
> > We looked at the "mainstream" languages commonly used as an embeded
> > scripting language
> > (Python, Perl, Ruby, TCL, LISP, and Lua) and this was our consensus:
> > 
> > Perl - Excellent text processing language but doesn't scale well in big
> > projects.
> > 
> > TCL - Much better when using in a large project but doesn't have the same
> > power as
> > Perl that we need.
> > 
> > Python - Pretty much the same as TCL.
> > 
> > Ruby - Good for representing abstract data but lacked the power/efficiency
> > of Perl.
> > 
> > Lua - Easy to read and write large portions of it but wasn't powerful
> > enough.
> > 
> > LISP - Excellent and both extracting and representing abstract lexical data
> > and scales
> > up and down very well. The only problem is that the syntax isn't everyone's
> > cup of
> > tea and can be quirky.
> > 
> > While we were discussing these languages I kept thinking to myself "Heck, if
> > Euphoria
> > was available for the Mac we probably wouldn't even need to embed a
> > language, we could
> > just use Euphoria entirely" since Euphoria's fast enough that the overhead
> > is negligible
> > in most cases. In fact so far all the algorithms we've discussed I've
> > initially described
> > in Euphoria since it gives LISP's power with BASIC-y syntax. 
> > 
> > 
> > Pleeeease, please Rob port Euphoria to the Mac. I don't want to go back to
> > Perl! It
> > would open up a whole new arena of coders and make Euphoria more of a
> > "legitimate"
> > product. I would buy the source and port it myself but, sadly, I'm a poor
> > college student
> > without a Mac. However, if money/hardware is an issue I would be willing to
> > donate
> > some money for the developement of a Mac version. I doubt it would be that
> > hard since
> > Mac OS X uses liberal amounts of FreeBSD code.
> > 
> > Oh yeah, in case anyone's wondering what we're using for the time being,
> > we're using
> > (I think) Objective-C to interface with graphics and such and Guile (the GNU
> > projects
> > version of Scheme for embeding stuff) for our hardcore data mangling.
> >  I miss Euphoria already. :(
> > 
> 
> Hi guys, just droping in:
> 
> This is probably not to big of an issue, assuming Robert modifies any x86
> inline-ASM
> in his C code to PowerPC ASM instructions (when Apples switches to Intel CPUs
> in 2006,
> this shouldnt be an issue).
> 
> I think Robert can use GCC v3.6 or GCC v4.x to compile the code for MacOS X
> 10.x and
> produce Mach-O executables? For sure there are some 100% ANSII compliant C
> compilers
> for MacOS X.
> 
> Then you guys can do bare-bones interfacing with the Carbon API (until you get
> somthing
> like Win32Lib), which is a complete C style procedural API for MacOS X
> development.
> Carbon is as complete as the Cocoa (Objective C) and the Java APIs. Although
> Cocoa
> is the perfered API, Carbon can do everything Cocoa can (I believe).
> 
> As far as I'm concerned, there shouldnt be much hassle getting Euphoria onto
> MacOS
> X, and earlier.
> 
> Ofcourse there is plenty of issues getting support for WinFX (.NET), but I
> dont want
> to go there again ;).
> 

I guess the biggest challenge would be that Robert would first have to go buy a
new Mac in order to port it and/or do extensive bug & regression testing. But
then again he might already have one.

Macs are fairly expensive in general, but he can get a cute Mac mini that comes
with MacOS X 10.4 Tiger installed for as little as $499! I might do the same,
hehe.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/71702/wo/6m2FIZncRj7K34deuiU5ipOWtE7/0.0.11.1.0.6.23.1.3.1.0.0.0.1.0


Regards,
Vincent

----------------------------------------------
     ___	      __________      ___
    /__/\            /__________\    |\ _\
    \::\'\          //::::::::::\\   |'|::|
     \::\'\        //:::_::::_:::\\  |'|::|
      \::\'\      //::/  |::|  \::\\ |'|::|
       \::\'\    //::/   |::|   \::\\|'|::|
        \::\'\__//::/    |::|    \::\|'|::|
         \::\','/::/     |::|     \::\\|::|
          \::\_/::/      |::|      \::\|::|
           \::,::/       |::|       \:::::|
            \___/        |__|        \____|

 	                 .``.
		         ',,'

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