The basis for an xtalk engine [I/we] control

[OpenXTalkPaul]

I was in two minds about whether to contribute here anymore. As I mentioned, feel free to use the last version I gave you of webtalk (134 I think), and put it into github, or whatever you want to do with it. Rename it / rebrand it if you want.

What is currently 'webtalk', I'll continue with on my own fork over at:
https://www.tsites.co.uk/sites/other/other.php
That page will be changed with my updates.

OK, I might just do that fork since I'd prefer MIT license (although I do understand your concerns about such liberal licensing).
I'll certainly be looking forward to seeing you progress going it alone, please keep us informed when you make updates or whatever, just ignore any annoying comments (easier said than done I know) or turn comments off, or just shoot me a PM and I'll make a post about your updates that you never have to read.
Thank you very much for all the work put in already on OXT-Lite and Webtalk.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

You can download a copy of webtalk, (current version), from here. You don't need anything special to run it. Just a recent browser (probably NOT safari)

It works fine in Safari as far as I can tell (with the exception of Apple not supporting .ogg media formats),
Mentioning that might turn away some users that prefer Safari (or Webkit) over Chromium or Gecko based browsers.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Reminds me of when they removed 'LET' from BASIC: I for one sighed a huge sigh of relief.

I can't see any synonym or abbrv. for keywords causing any bursts.
IF I was going to remove one or the other, which I have no intention of doing because it would break compatibility with scripts from one xTalk implementation or the other, then I'd remove 'return' as constant that equals the carriage-return character since 'return' is also language keyword used to return a value in functions, which forces the interpreter to have to consider which context 'return' being used in, plus 'return' is 4 more key presses to type vs. 'cr'.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

put item 2 of line two of "hell,o" & cr & "wor,ld"

Doesn't work in either interpreter at the moment.

You can use:

Code: Select all

put "hell,o" & return & "wor,ld" into tString
put item 2 of line 2 of tString

Yes, my regex version is a little more restrictive, but the lexer/parser/interpreter method just grew too complex to manage.

Hopefully you take this as constructive criticism: It's not just more restrictive, it's incompatible with HyperTalk/xTalks. Neither is HyperCard simulator or Vipercard's parsing, at least when it comes to the first example I used.

I think with any implementation, the more complete it is the more the code will grow to be very complex and difficult to manage. I don't think every function/command should be a separate files, that makes for a lot of files (of course they can be re-combined later like 'webpack'). I think you might have broken the thing apart a little too much, I found it more difficult to figure out what was in which files, not knowing the names (the text guide you provided was very helpful in that regard). But if you're going to be the only developer working on it then you do whatever makes sense for you.

Would you consider adding the 'cr' as a synonym for 'return'-as-a-constant (ASCII char 10 or crlf ASCII 13 + 10 for Windows)?